[ Eddy's Introduction to Online Search Tools ]
Eddy's Lists of Quality Search Tools:
[ General Search Engines ]
[ Search Engines for News Items & Magazine Articles ]
[ Search Engines for Blogs & RSS Feeds ]
[ Search Engines for Images, Photographs, and Graphics ]
[ Archival Search Engines ]
[ Other Search Engines ]
[ Directories ]
[ Topic-Specific Indexes & Resource Pages ]
[ Deep Web Tools ]
[ Additional Search Resources ]
[ Telephone & E-Mail Directories ]
[ Return to Searching Eddy's Site ]
Click here for a useful introduction I've
written for those not familiar with online search tools.
AllTheWeb
http://www.alltheweb.com
Indexes 3.2 billion web documents, making it the #2 search engine after
Google. If you didn't find what you're looking for on Google,
this should be your next stop, followed by
Yahoo (engine search),
AltaVista, WiseNut (which also powers the
search engine component of LookSmart), and
Teoma. In addition to being highly comprehensive, AllTheWeb's results tend
to be very relevant. Besides searching for documents and websites, AllTheWeb
lets you search pictures, news stories, multimedia files (video clips, MP3s,
etc.), and
FTP files.
AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com
AltaVista is the oldest search engine, and was for many years the most popular
one—a title that is today held by Google. AltaVista changed
hands a few times and its quality suffered as a result. Today it has been
reincarnated and is probably the third-best search engine after
Google and AllTheWeb. Its results are not as comprehensive as Google's,
AllTheWeb's, or Yahoo's, but it's still quite large and powerful and should be
consulted if you can't find what you're looking for with the other two.
Ask Jeeves
http://www.ask.com
This is a unique search engine in that it allows you to enter your queries in
the form of a question. For example, you can type in "What is depression?" and
Ask Jeeves w give you a list of the Internet sources it thinks would best answer
that question for you. How does it do this? Well, the editors at Ask Jeeves used
to analyse what people search for the most and then hand picked the websites
(and, additionally, pictures and news articles) that they think best match
users' queries. Today, Ask Jeeves relies on its own search engine,
Teoma, to do what the editors once did. This is a good
service if you're looking for information on a popular topic and are more at
home entering queries in the form of questions rather than keywords. However, if
you're looking for more unusual information, consider the other search tools in
this list. A great feature of Ask Jeeves is the Smart Answers tool
which is useful for getting quick facts. For instance, you can ask "What is the
capital of Texas" and Ask Jeeves will provide an immediate answer.
Google
http://www.google.com
Currently indexing nearly 4.3 billion web documents, this is the Internet's
largest, most popular, and most powerful search engine. When you're looking for
something specific online, this should be one of your first stops. Google
differs from its competitors in that it is both highly comprehensive and
provides highly relevant search results (even for obscure topics).
The secret behind Google's relevancy is its proprietary PageRank
system:
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.
One of Google's most popular features is the caching system which periodically takes "snapshots" of individual webpages and saves them in a huge archival database. Viewing cached webpages can be very useful if you want to see what they looked like at some point in the past. To view the cached version of any webpage found by Google, just click on the "Cached" link that shows up beside the description.
If you don't find what you're looking for on Google, visit AllTheWeb, Yahoo (engine search), AltaVista, WiseNut, and Teoma (the Internet's other major search engines), in that order. From my own experiments, I can say that the other search engines (even WiseNut, the newest one) often pick up what Google misses.
Teoma (owned by AskJeeves)
http://www.teoma.com
After Google, AllTheWeb,
Yahoo (engine search),
AltaVista, and WiseNut, this is the one of
the major search engines. Its index is smaller than that of the other major
engines (it indexes about 500,000 million pages), but when it comes to searching
for popular topics, the relevance of Teoma's results are often in the same ranks
as Google's. The reason for this lies in the unique way Teoma determines the
relevance of websites:
Instead of ranking results based upon the sites with the most links leading to them, Teoma analyzes the Web as it is organically organized—in naturally-occurring communities that are about or related to the same subject—to determine which sites are most relevant. Teoma is the only search technology that can locate communities on the Web within their specific subject areas, as they actually exist. And this allows us to finely tune our search process, providing more precise results.
To determine the authority—and thus the overall quality and relevance—of a site's content, Teoma uses Subject-Specific PopularitySM. Subject-Specific Popularity ranks a site based on the number of same-subject pages that reference it, not just general popularity. In a recent test performed by respected industry publication Search Engine Watch, Teoma's relevance grade was raised to an "A" following the integration of Teoma 2.0.
To help you refine your search, Teoma suggests additional topics that you might want to explore. With each of your search results, you are also directed to "resource pages" which contain links specifically devoted to the topic you're researching; no other search tools are able to automatically locate and rank the relevance of such resource pages.
WebCrawler Metasearch
http://www.webcrawler.com
WebCrawler is a "metacrawler", meaning that it searches multiple search engines
simultaneously, giving you the top results from each one. WebCrawler gives the
best results from Google, Yahoo,
AltaVista, Ask Jeeves,
About, LookSmart,
Overture,
Teoma, and FindWhat.
This approach can be useful if you want to see a cross-section of what is on the
Web or if you don't have time to visit multiple search engines individually. To
enhance your search, WebCrawler allows you to combine your query with keywords
that are frequently associated with the topic or information you're looking for.
Like all the other search engines, WebCrawler has its drawbacks. Because you are
searching through several indexes at once, you will not see all the relevant
results of your search (eg, you won't find all the Google listings that you
might if you were to search Google itself). Thus, what you
get in breadth you sacrifice in detail; this can be a problem if you're
searching for something unusual because this kind of information does not tend
to show up in the "top results" of each search engine that is queried by
WebCrawler.
WiseNut
http://www.wisenut.com
This is a relatively new search engine (born 2001), but its size and the strong
relevance of its results puts it on par with Google,
AllTheWeb,
Yahoo (engine search), AltaVista, and
Teoma. It indexes about 1.1 billion web documents. The relevance of its
results owes to textual analysis of links, document popularity, user feedback,
and editorial comment. I would rank WiseNut as the fourth major search engine.
LookSmart offers WiseNut search results through its own
website.
AllTheWebNews
http://news.alltheweb.com
The #3 news search engine after Google News and
Yahoo News. The
Advanced News
Search page allows you to restrict your search to specific news categories,
specific news sources, and the age of the news items.
AltaVista News
http://news.altavista.com
The #4 news search engine after Google News,
Yahoo News, and AllTheWeb News.
Gives you results from the AllTheWeb News search engine, as well as content from
major news partners such as The New York Times, BBC, Forbes, The Times
(London), and the Washington Post. Lets you refine your search by
specifying news category, global region, and date range, and also lets you
specifically restrict search results to one of the major news partners. Also
allows you to browse major headlines for different topic areas, all gathered
from different sources. AltaVista News is good if you like content from major
news providers; but if you want anything more comprehensive and perhaps less
biased, consult Google News first.
DayPop
http://www.daypop.com
Searches 59,00 news sites, weblogs ("blogs"), and
RSS feeds for current events and breaking news; it's
especially good for searching news items from the last few days or so. DapPop
searches both popular news sources (eg, CNN), as well as lesser-known sources,
blogs, and RSS feeds. Major news sites are scanned every three hours; the others
are scanned every 24 hours. I like DayPop a lot because it allows me to browse
news items from many non-traditional news sources that the other news search
engines ignore. The end result is that I get a "better-rounded" perspective on a
given news event or issue.
Find Articles (by LookSmart)
http://www.findarticles.com
The web's largest free articles database, with 3.5 million full-text articles
from over 700 major magazines, journals, and newspapers. Browse through specific
publications or use keywords to search through all the publications
simultaneously, and then read the articles free of charge. Publications include:
The Advocate, American Demographics, Annual Review of Psychology, Behavioral
Medicine, British Medical Journal, Brown University Child and Adolescent
Behavior Letter, Brown University Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology
Update, Commonweal, Contemporary Review, Discover, Harper's Magazine, HR
Magazine, Humanist, Industry Week, Internet World, The Industry Standard,
Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, Journal of Emotional and Behavioral
Disorders, Journal of General Psychology, Journal of Sex Research, Los Angeles
Magazine, Mother Jones, National Review, Natural History, New Statesman, New
York Observer, Psychology Today, Psychopharmacology Update, Saturday Evening
Post, Sex Roles: A Journal of Sex Research, Skeptical Inquirer, and USA
Today Magazine. See also MagPortal for free, full-text
articles from other magazines.
Google News
http://news.google.com
The #1 news search engine, this is a huge continuously updated database of news
articles from over 4,500 different sources (including archives of articles from
the past 30 days). This database allows for the least "biased" coverage of news
events for two reasons. First, it does not focus exclusively on any one type of
news source. Second, it does not involve any human intervention; it uses a
special
algorithm to automatically scour the Internet for anything it thinks is a
newly updated news item. You can search for news items by entering keywords or
by searching through categories into which news item are sorted automatically.
Search results tend to be very relevant for two reasons: 1. Google News indexes
entire pages, not just headlines; 2. it uses Google's PageRank system
to determine which stories are the most popular at any given moment and, using
this information, gives you results from news sources with the best news
coverage of a given topic. If you don't find what you're looking for using
Google News, go to the other news services: Yahoo News,
AllTheWeb News, AltaVista News, or
the RSS feed/blog search engines, in that order.
NewsIsFree
http://www.newsisfree.com
Search engine that indexes headlines, articles, blog entries,
and forum postings from over 7,500 news sources that distribute their content
via RSS. In addition to keyword searching, you can browse
through the news categories and read the latest items from the topic areas in
which you're interested. Like DayPop, good for getting
items from both popular and lesser-known news sources.
MagPortal
http://www.magportal.com
Similar to FindArticles, allows you to search for and read
full-text articles from about 200 magazines and journals, free of charge.
Publications include: The Advocate, The American Prospect, The Atlantic
Monthly, Education Week, Humanities, Mother Jones, New Architect, Reason, Salon,
Science News, Scientific American, Search Engine Watch, Skeptical Inquirer,
Smithsonian, and Trial.
Yahoo News
http://news.yahoo.com
The #2 news search engine is similar to Google News in
that you can search for news items that are automatically gathered from
thousands of news sources by the Moreover news crawler (although Google is
better because it indexes entire pages, not just headlines, and provides more
relevant results by relying on its PageRank page popularity system).
The news sources include mainstream publications as well as the major wire
services (Associated Press, Reuters). The Full Coverage Feature allows
you to browse news categories into which hand-picked news items are placed by
Yahoo editors; this is useful if you want a uniquely human perspective on a
given news topic. In terms of its comprehensive, Yahoo News is not as good as
Google, which culls from many more news sources. However, Google and Yahoo each
search news sources that the other doesn't, so if you don't find something in
Google, go to Yahoo News, AllTheWeb News,
AltaVista News, or the RSS feed/blog search engines.
A blog is short-form for "weblog"—a personal regularly updated online "diary". Many people use their blogs to offer a personal, subjective perspective on the news and current events reported by more traditional news outlets. And they often report on news that others source don't. Increasingly, blogs are becoming a major news source in and of themselves; this is in part because the content is often distributed to other websites through a special language called RSS (sites which gather content from other sites through the RSS language are called "RSS feeds"). In fact, blogs are becoming so informative and influential that even journalists are scouring them on a daily basis looking for new story ideas, leads, and angles and learning what people really consider important and want to read about. If you want a more well-rounded take on current events and issues, make sure to visit blogs in addition to larger commercial sites. Use the search engines below, in combination, to assist you in your journey.
BlogDigger
http://www.blogdigger.com
Search through blog entries that are submitted by RSS feeds or that are found
via the weblogs.com site.
DayPop
http://www.daypop.com
Searches 59,00 news sites, weblogs, and RSS feeds for current events and
breaking news; it's especially good for items from the last few days or so.
DapPop searches both popular news sources (eg, CNN), as well as lesser-known
sources, blogs, and RSS feeds. I like DayPop a lot because it allows me to
browse news items from many non-traditional news sources (namely blogs and RSS
feeds) that the other news search engines ignore.
FaganFinder
http://www.faganfinder.com
Excellent meta search engine that allows you to search simultaneously through
multiple blog and RSS feed search engines.
Feedster (formely known as Roogle)
http://www.feedster.com
Allows you to search through blogs and other news content submitted via RSS
feeds. Because so many blogs distribute their content via RSS, Feedster can
provide very comprehensive results.
NewsIsFree
http://www.newsisfree.com
Search engine that indexes headlines, articles, blog entries, and forum postings
from over 7,500 news sources that distribute their content via RSS. In addition
to keyword searching, you can browse through the news categories and read the
latest items from the topic areas in which you're interested.
AltaVista Image Search
http://www.altavista.com/image
The Web's largest image search engine, meaning it indexes more images
than any other search engine. This does not mean, however, that it is the most
"comprehensive"; although it indexes the most images, it does not
search from as many sources as Google's image search
(which holds the title of most comprehensive) and its results are not as
relevant as those from Picsearch.
Google Images
http://images.google.com
Indexing 800,000,000 images from more sources than any other search engine, this
is the Internet's most comprehensive tool for finding pictures, photos, and
graphics. The second most comprehensive image search engine is
AltaVista. However, the one that gives you the most relevant
results is Picsearch.
Picsearch
http://www.picsearch.com
Although it does not index as many images as AltaVista's image
search (which holds the title as the Web's largest image search)
or from as many sources as Google (the web's
most comprehensive image search), it is unrivaled for the relevance
of its search results.
A few search engines let you search through old websites and webpages that are no longer online. These search engines use caching systems which take "snapshots" of websites and webpages and then save them in a huge archival database that you can search through the same way you do other search engines. Viewing cached websites and webpages can be very useful if you want to see what they looked like at some point in the past.
Google Cache
http://www.forumone.com
One of the popular features of the Google search engine is
the caching system which periodically takes regular "snapshots" of webpages and
saves them in a huge archival database. To view the cached version of any
webpage found by Google, just click on the "Cached" link that shows up beside
the description. Note that an older version of a webpage does not stay in the
cache permanently; it may be replaced by a newer version if Google happens to
visit that page again at some future time. If you want the option of choosing
between different older versions of a webpage (or even an entire website),
visit The Wayback Machine (described below).
The Wayback Machine
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
Allows you to browse through 30 billion webpages (including entire websites)
archived from 1996 to a few months ago. Similar to Google Cache, with three
differences. First, The WayBack Machine has archived many more pages than Google,
making it the more comprehensive service of the two. Second, it archives entire
websites, not just individual webpages. Third, it allows you to specify the date
of the older version of the webpage or website you wish to view.
ForumOne
http://www.forumone.com
Search engine that indexes discussion posts from over 300,000 Web-based
discussion groups. If you want to search
Usenet
groups instead, visit Google Groups.
Google Usenet Search
http://groups.google.com
This is a powerful and comprehensive search engine for
Usenet
discussion groups. It has indexed around 800,000,000 discussion postings so
far. It replaces the old DejaNews service.
SpeechBot
http://www.speechbot.com
A search engine that lets you look for audio files from popular radio programs.
When you type in your keywords, you can choose from a list of relevant links
that take you to the exact segment of an episode of a radio program.
AltaVista Directory (Open Directory Project Portal)
http://www.altavista.com/dir
In addition to its search engine, AltaVista allows you to search from the Web's
largest human-edited categorical directory, The Open Directory
Project. In fact, it is best to search the Open Directory Project from sites
like AltaVista or Google (see below) because these sites use programs which are
better able to extract relevant information from the Open Directory than is the
program at the Open Directory site itself.
Google Directory (Open Directory Project Portal)
http://dir.google.com
Although Google is best known for its search engine capabilities, it also allows
you to search from the web's largest human-edited categorical directory,
The Open Directory Project. In fact, it is best to search
Open Directory Project from the Google site because Google's is better able to
extract relevant information from the Open Directory than is the search program
at the Open Directory site itself.
LookSmart
http://www.looksmart.com
LookSmart is a human-compiled directory of about 2.5 billion Web links organised
into 300,000 categories. If you haven't found what you're looking in the Open
Directory (either through Google,
AltaVista, or the Open Directory site) or in the
Yahoo Directory, then come here next (if, of course, you
feel that you would benefit from a human-compiled list of Internet sources). In
addition to giving you results from its human-edited categories, LookSmart can
also gives you results from WiseNut, the major search engine
it recently bought. WiseNut indexes 1.1 billion documents
and offers very relevant search results. A fantastic feature of LookSmart is
FindArticles: the web's largest free articles database, with
3.5 million full-text items from over 700 major magazines and newspapers.
Open Directory Project
http://www.dmoz.org
Beating out Yahoo, the Open Directory Project is the largest and most
comprehensive human-edited directory on the Web, with almost 61,000 volunteer
editors indexing over 4 million sites into nearly half a million categories. If
you don't know what exactly you're looking for, this is a good place to start.
Categorical directories like Open Directory Project and Yahoo are especially
good for popular topics because they help you narrow down and refine your
search. Many online search sites that have categorical directories actually get
their results from the Open Directory Project (these sites include
Google, AltaVista, and
Lycos). In fact, to get more
out of your search you should search the Open Directory not only through its own
site, but also through Google and the other services that draw from its
database. The reason for this is that other services have a more powerful method
of searching through the Open Directory and, as a result, provide more relevant
results. However, if you can't find what you're looking by browsing the Open
Directory Project from Google or
AltaVista, come to this site directly.
Yahoo Directory
http://dir.yahoo.com
This is the categorical directory portion of Yahoo and is the oldest directory
on the Web. Yahoo's directory used to make Yahoo one of the top Web
destinations. Unfortunately, updates to the directory were discontinued a few
years back and Yahoo decided to reposition itself as a search engine
like Google. However, even though it's no longer being
updated, the directory is still vast and you get the added bonus of receiving
Yahoo's search engine results with each of your queries. If you feel
that you would benefit from using a human-edited categorical directory, this is
a good first bet, after the Open Directory Project.
Categorical directories are especially good for popular topics, because they
help you narrow down and refine your search query.
About
http://www.about.com
A good place to start general research on a popular topic, this website has
resource pages listing over a million useful sites for over 700 common topics.
The resource pages are compiled by special "guides" who have some particular
expertise or background in each of the topics.
Eddy Elmer's Psychology Resource Pages
http://www.eddyelmer.com/psychology
My own annotated collection of about 750 quality psychology-related websites and
documents.
PsychCrawler
(American Psychological Association)
http://www.psychcrawler.com
This is the APA's specialised directory for online psychology resources.
Although it looks like a traditional search engine, it's actually not, because
the sites are all hand-picked by APA staff.
Teoma (Owned by AskJeeves)
http://www.teoma.com
Teoma is primarily known as a search engine (see its
description above) but with each of your search results you are also
directed to "resource pages" which contains links specifically devoted to the
topic you're researching. No other search tools are able to automatically locate
and rank the relevance of such resource pages:
By dividing the Web into local subject communities, Teoma is able to find and identify expert resources about a particular subject. These sites feature lists of other authoritative sites and links relating to the search topic.
For example, a professor of Middle Eastern history may have created a page devoted to his collection of sites that explain the geography and topography of the Persian Gulf. This site would appear under the heading "Resources" in response to a Persian Gulf-related query. No previous search technology has been able to find and rank these sites.
CompletePlanet (Powered by BrightPlanet)
http://www.completeplanet.com
Search 103,000 deep Web databases containing
detailed information on everything from agriculture to weather. You can type a
keyword(s) and search all the databases simultaneously, or you can browse
through the topic-specific categories and restrict your search to a specific
database(s).
The Invisible Web
http://www.invisible-web.net
This is a directory of about 1,000 deep Web
databases organised by topic category. Databases span all sorts of categories,
from arts and architecture, to U.S. and world history.
ProFusion
http://www.profusion
Similar to the Invisible Web directory. Note: Find
deep Web databases by browsing through the
topic categories; the keyword search feature simply queries traditional search
engines and does not, therefore, locate the databases located in the deep Web.
The following sites have extensive lists of additional search engines, directories, and topic-specific indexes and resource pages:
Search Engine Watch
http://www.searchenginewatch.com
Lists the major search tools and discusses the pros and cons of each.
Search Engine Guide
http://www.searchengineguide.com
Lists almost 3,000 search engines (including specialised search engines).
Yahoo maintains an
extensive listing of nearly 500 search tools and the
Open Directory Project has an index of about
1,300 directories and
300 search engines.
Use the following sites to locate phone numbers, mailing addresses, postal codes, and e-mail addresses for people around the world. The phone numbers and addresses are culled from local telephone directories; the e-mail addresses come from a variety of sources (including user lists from free online services like Yahoo and Hotmail) or are contributed by users themselves. Use a combination of these tools to increase the chances of finding the contact information you need. This is important for two reasons. First, because each of the phone databases cull information from different databases, no one database will contain every phone number in a given area. Second, because e-mail information is often voluntarily-submitted by users, it may have expired on one site but be up-to-date on another (users often submit their information to a number of databases but when their information changes, they often forget to update it in all the databases to which they originally submitted information).
AnyWho Online Directory (AT&T)
http://anywho.com
Database of phone numbers and addresses collected from local white pages
directories around the US. Includes a reverse telephone lookup feature (searches
for the name and address associated with a phone number).
Canada411
http://canada411.sympatico.ca
This site allows searching of all of Canada's major telephone directories. Most
of the listed addresses come with postal codes, too.
People Search Engines
http://www.people-search-engines.com
Searches multiple databases simultaneously for email addresses, phone numbers
(US only), and addresses (US only). The benefit of this service is that you
don't have to search individual databases one-by-one. The drawback is that only
the top results from each database are presented; the contact information you
need might not be in those top results and you might need to do a more thorough
search by visiting each database individually.
Switchboard
http://www.switchboard.com
Allows you to search email addresses, phone numbers (US only), and addresses (US
only). Includes a reverse telephone lookup feature. Note that when you get the
results of your query, you'll see all sorts of listings that you have to pay to
view. Simply ignore these and scroll down to the end of the page to see the free
listings.
White Pages Around the World
http://www.whitepagesglobal.com
Links to national white pages telephone directories.
WhoWhere
http://www.whowhere.com
Use this service to locate e-mail addresses, phone numbers (US only), and postal
codes (US only).
Yahoo People Search
http://people.yahoo.com
Use this to find e-mail addresses, phone numbers (US only), and mailing
addresses (US only).
Yellow Pages Canada
http://www.yellowpages.ca
Search all the Yellow Pages directories in Canada.
[ Eddy's Introduction to
Online Search Tools ]
Eddy's Lists of Quality Search Tools:
[ General Search Engines ]
[ Search Engines for News Items & Magazine Articles ]
[ Search Engines for Blogs & RSS Feeds ]
[ Search Engines for Images, Photographs, and Graphics ]
[ Archival Search Engines ]
[ Other Search Engines ]
[ Directories ]
[ Topic-Specific Indexes & Resource Pages ]
[ Deep Web Tools ]
[ Additional Search Resources ]
[ Telephone & E-Mail Directories ]
[ Return to Searching Eddy's Site ]
Copyright © 2004, by Eddy M. Elmer
Permanent URL: http://www.eddyelmer.com/search_tools.htm