To search for documents or files on my website, enter the search terms and then click "Google Search".
To learn about online search engines, categorical directories, and topic
indexes, see below.
[ 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 ]
[ Other Search Engines ]
[ Directories ]
[ Topic-Specific Indexes & Resource Pages ]
[ Deep Web Tools ]
[ Additional Search Resources ]
[ Telephone & E-Mail Directories ]
The Internet, and particularly the World Wide Web (WWW or "the web", one of the largest "components" of the Internet) is a wonderful tool for either commencing or enhancing your research. You can use the information you find online for brainstorming; gauging coverage of a given topic; enhancing more traditional research methods; locating very specific information or documents or files; and a variety of other purposes. But how do you go about finding this information? Well, there are four broad classes of tools that you can use, and all of them can be found online: 1. search engines, 2. categorically-organised directories, 3. topic-specific indexes or "resource pages"; and "deep web tools".
A search engine is an online computer program which uses a "robot" (specifically, a "crawler") to automatically and randomly crawl around the entire Internet, indexing everything the robot finds and putting it into a huge database searchable by keywords. When you go to a search engine's website, you are asked to type in keywords that describe the information you want to find; the search engine then consults its index and points you to websites and other locations on the Internet which contain information that most closely matches your keywords. The process is akin to searching for a name in a phone book; you search for a particular name and are then given a corresponding phone number that allows you to connect to the person you want. The search engine similarly gives you the name of the information you want (usually in the form of a title of a document or file on a website) and provides its own "phone number" in the form of a link which takes you to the information you want (again, usually a document or file located on a website). Search engines index all types of documents and files, including HTML files (like the one you're reading), graphics and photographs, and multimedia files like audio and video files.
Because search engines use robots which continually visit websites and other Internet locations in a random fashion, they are often the best tool for giving you the greatest "breadth" of information. However, because the process is random and automated and does not involve much human intervention (i.e., humans don't review the information that the search engines index), quality is sometimes sacrificed for breath. In addition to finding highly relevant documents, files, and sites which other programs did not index, you are often also presented with documents and websites which, although they seem to match your keywords, aren't really useful to you or of any redeemable quality.
Each search engine differs somewhat in the exact method (or "algorithm") it uses to index online information, which means that—depending on what you're looking for—each one will vary in terms of how "thorough", "detailed", "relevant", and "important" its results are. For instance, although one search engine's claim to fame may be that it indexes more websites than any other, the results it gives you may not be as relevant to your query as the results given by a smaller, albeit more selective search engine. Given that search engines differ in the algorithms they use, you should try to use more than one search engine if you want to find as much (quality) information as you can on a given topic. Time, however, is always a constraint, and you may have time to use only one or two search engines. In such cases, read through the listing of search engines below and try to figure out which one you think would give you the best results based on what you're looking for, the kind of results you want, how specific you want the results to be, and so forth.
Examples of search engines includes Google, All The Web, AltaVista, and Teoma. Some search engines are more specialised, such as those which search just for news articles (e.g., Google News), images (e.g., Picsearch), or content from weblogs ("blogs") and RSS feeds (e.g., FaganFinder)
Online directories differ from search engines in that they are compiled by human beings. As opposed to automated robots, real people scour the Internet looking for quality websites, and then index those websites into directories organised by topical category. When you visit one of these online directories, you are presented with a huge number of categories, hierarchically organised by topic. There are two ways to find information using online directories. First, you can browse through the hierarchy of categories until you get to the category which best describes what you're looking for; you then look through the list of relevant websites, documents, or files and view the ones you feel would be most useful to you. Alternatively, you can just type in a few keywords describing what you're looking for and let the online directory either 1. take you to what it thinks are the relevant categories that will contain links to the kind of information you want; or 2. scour all of its categories and return a list of what it thinks are relevant websites and documents from all of its categories.
The obvious benefit to online directories is that they are edited and managed by real people. Reviewers visit various websites and place them under intuitively-deigned categories if they feel the sites are relevant and of sufficient quality. When you search an online directory, you are going to encounter fewer irrelevant sites than you would were you to use a search engine. However, because humans are not machines, they cannot possibly visit as many sites as do the robots (crawlers) used by search engines. Therefore, what you gain in quality, you may sacrifice in breadth. Furthermore, determining what is a "quality" website is a subjective process; what one reviewer at Yahoo might think is "quality" (or even "relevant") may not be quality or relevant to you. In fact, you might wonder why certain sites were included in a given category, while others weren't.
Examples of popular online directories include Yahoo and the Open Directory Project ("the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web").
Topic-specific indexes and resource pages are similar to online directories in that they are human-edited lists of websites. The difference is that they tend to focus on one specific topic. Resource lists and indexes are usually created, edited, and updated by individual Internet users or organisations that have a special interest or expertise in a given topic. Because these users and organisations focus their energies on one given topic, they have more time than the editors at the larger online directories to scour the Internet for websites, documents, and files relevant to that topic. In addition, their interest or expertise in a given topic is often greater than that of the reviewers at online directories. As a result, you get a much greater number of quality Internet resources relevant to your topic of interest. The drawback to indexes and resource lists are the same as those for online directories.
Examples of topic-specific indexes and resource pages include FindLaw, PsychCrawler (which looks like a robot-driven search engine, but is actually human-edited), my own Psychology Resources List, and About.com (a website with a large number of resource lists edited by individual users or "guides" with a special expertise in a given area)
Although search engines, directories, and indexes are powerful tools in helping you locate online information, they are still only able to access about 10% of the information on the Internet. Why is this? Well, there are at least four reasons. First, the majority of websites are not recognised by these tools because they do not use proper titles, keyword meta tags, or other identifiers. Second, even if a search engine or other tool is able to access a given site, it does not generally index every single document or file on that site (given that some sites have thousands of pages, this would be impractical and would make search engines' and other programs' databases too unwieldy to search efficiently). Third, these tools tend to focus on data found on the World Wide Web; much more data is available in the other "components" of the Internet (e.g., FTP servers, newsgroups, Telnet sites, etc.). Finally, because the Internet is so vast and grows exponentially by the minute, these tools cannot possibly explore all the content that is available online.
Given this limitation, what's your best bet for accessing as much relevant online information as you can? First, use a variety of search engines, indexes, and directories when looking for information on a given topic or when searching for a specific document or file; if one tool fails to turn up what you're looking for, another might do the trick. Second, when you reach the websites or servers to which search engines and other tools directed you, make sure to look through the site maps or use the search feature on those sites and servers so you can manually explore everything and see if there is anything else of interest to you. Third, have a look at this article, "Those Dark Hiding Places: The Invisible Web Revealed", by Robert J. Lackie. Finally, read the need section on "Deep Web Tools".
There are two "layers" to the World Wide Web portion of the Internet. The first is the "surface layer", which is comprised of static, permanent webpages with their own permanent links. These are the pages you find when you visit a website directly or find it through a search engine or other search tool. The second layer is the "deep layer", and is 500 times bigger than the surface layer. The deep layer is comprised of the contents of thousands of special databases. These databases hold a a wealth of information, but are not available in the form of permanent web pages. This is because the information that is retrieved through databases is always "dynamic"; different formulations of information will be created depending upon the query a given user makes when s/he visits a database at a given time. The information that is retrieved from these databases is not turned into a permanent web page with its own permanent link. Therefore, traditional search engines are unable to locate this information. The only way to view the contents of these databases is to visit each one, one-by-one, and tell them what you want from them. Fortunately, there are now some special tools—called "deep web tools"—that allow you to query multiple databases simultaneously. This can save you a tremendous amount of time.
Is it worth exploring the deep Web for information? The folks at BrightPlanet—owners of one of the major deep Web search tools—describe the vast amount of information to be found in the deep Web:
Public information on the deep Web is currently 400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web. The deep Web contains 7,500 terabytes of information, compared to 19 terabytes of information in the surface Web. The deep Web contains nearly 550 billion individual documents compared to the 1 billion of the surface Web. More than an estimated 100,000 deep Web sites presently exist. Sixty of the largest deep Web sites collectively contain about 750 terabytes of information – sufficient by themselves to exceed the size of the surface Web by 40 times.
BrightPlanet also describes the kind of information you will find in the deep Web:
Deep Web sites tend to be narrower with deeper content than conventional surface sites. Total quality content of the deep Web is at least 1,000 to 2,000 times greater than that of the surface Web. Deep Web content is highly relevant to every information need, market and domain. More than half of the deep Web content resides in topic specific databases. A full 95% of the deep Web is publicly accessible information—not subject to fees or subscriptions.
Because of the highly specific and detailed nature of the information found on the deep Web, the staff at Invisible Web—another deep Web search tool—encourage the following:
In general, we like the idea of comparing the resources available on the Invisible Web to a good collection of reference works. The challenge is to be familiar with some key resources prior to needing them. Information professionals have always done this with canonical reference books, and often with traditional, proprietary databases like Dialog and Lexis-Nexis. We encourage you to approach the Invisible Web in the same way—consider each specialized search tool as you would an individual reference resource.
To learn more about the deep web, visit http://www.brightplanet.com/deepcontent/index.asp and http://www.invisible-web.net.
For more details on how to find information on the Internet, consider the following:
How Internet Search Engines Work
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/search-engine.htm
Great little article if you want a simpler explanation of how Internet search
tools work.
Search Engine Watch
http://www.searchenginewatch.com
A very comprehensive site featuring articles on how different search tools and
engines work, detailed
descriptions of all the major online search tools (including search tools
for specific topics and media types), tips on how to search the Internet,
and news on search engine developments and technology. There are also many
articles with suggestions on how to optimise your own website so that search
engines will visit and index it. Everything you ever
wanted to know about search engines is on this site (and also on Search Engine
Guide, listed below).
Search Engine Guide
http://www.searchengineguide.com
Another great site with featuring: search engine news from all over the Internet
(including over 4,600 archived articles); a listing over almost 3,000 search
engines (including specialised search engines); and an extensive list of
relevant books and resources.
Yahoo maintains an excellent index of
sites devoted to Internet research and search tools (including sites which
give you more information on how to search the Internet) as well as an
extensive listing of nearly 500 search tools. The
Open Directory Project
also has a listing of useful
sites related to
Internet searching, as well as an index of about
1,300
directories and
300
search engines. Some of the research sites listed in these indexes feature
really helpful articles on finding online information that
most
of the general search engines don't pick up.
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 AltaVista, WiseNut (which also powers the search engine
component of LookSmart), and Teoma. In addition to being highly comprehensive,
AllTheWeb scores high in terms of the relevancy of its results. 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 for many years was the most popular
one, a title that is today held by Google. AltaVista changed hands a few times
and its quality suffered. 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 or AllTheWeb'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 would 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 analysed 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 did. This is a good service if you're looking for
information on a popular topic and are more at home entering queries as question
than as 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 will be given an immediate
answer.
Google
http://www.google.com
Currently indexing nearly 3.5 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. The secret behind Google's highly relevant results, even for
obscure topics, 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.
A very popular feature is the caching system which takes regular "snapshots" of websites 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.
If you don't find what you're looking for on Google, visit AllTheWeb, AltaVista, WiseNut, and Teoma (the Internet's other major search engines). From my own experiments, I can say that the other search engines often pick up what Google misses (even WiseNut, the newest search engine, picks up information that Google and the others miss).
Teoma (owned by AskJeeves)
http://www.teoma.com
After Google, AllTheWeb, 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 park 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 contains links specifically devoted to the topic you're researching; no other search tools are able to automatically locate and rank the relevance of 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. 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, 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
source, 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.
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 and newspapers. Search through all the
publications by keyword or browse through specific publications, 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 on 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.
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 provide more relevant results by relying on its PageRank page popularity
algorithm). The
news sources include mainstream publications, as well as the major wire services
(Associated Press, Reuters). You can also use the Full Coverage Feature 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, it 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 the 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 sources, ideas, and angles and seeing 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. This does not mean, however,
that it is the most "comprehensive"; although it indexes more images than any
other service, 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 425,000,000 images, this is the Internet's most comprehensive search
engine for finding pictures,
photos, and graphics. The second most comprehensive is
AltaVista.
However, the search engine which 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.
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. 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 exact segments of a given program episode.
AltaVista Directory (Open Directory Project Portal)
http://www.altavista.com/dir
In addition to its search engine, AltaVista allows searching from the web's largest
human-edited categorical directory, The Open Directory Project.
In fact, it is best to search 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 engine at the
site itself.
Google Directory (Open Directory Project Portal)
http://dir.google.com
Google is best known for its search engine capabilities, but also
allows searching 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 that site
than is the engine at the site itself.
LookSmart
http://www.looksmart.com
LookSmart is a human-compiled directory of websites. It has links to about 4
million, 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 give you
results from WiseNut , the major search engine it recently bought. WiseNut
(described below) indexes 1.1 billion documents and offers very relevant search
results. A fantastic feature is the FindArticles component of LookSmart: the
web's largest free articles database, with 3.5 million full-text articles 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 query. Many online search sites that have
categorical directories actually take their information from the Open Directory
Project (these sites include Google, AltaVista, and
Lycos). In fact, to get more out of your search, you should search not only
Open Directory Project's website directly, but also search it 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 providing 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, deriving the majority of its results from
the search engine Google. However, even though it's no
longer being updated, the directory is still vast and you get the added bonus of
receiving Google 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 like Open Directory Project and Yahoo 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 the 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 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 reason: 1. Each of the phone databases cull information from different databases; no one database will contain every phone number in a given area; 2. because e-mail information is often voluntarily-submitted by users, it may have expired on one site but be up-to-date on another (because 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 go to each database
individually to do a more thorough search.
Switchboard
http://www.switchboard.com
Allows you to search email addresses, phone numbers (US only), and addresses (US
only). Includes reverse telephone lookup feature. Note that when you're given
the results of your query, you're given 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 ]
[ Other Search Engines ]
[ Directories ]
[ Topic-Specific Indexes & Resource Pages ]
[ Deep Web Tools ]
[ Additional Search Resources ]
[ Telephone & E-Mail Directories ]
Copyright © 2004, by Eddy M. Elmer
Permanent URL: http://www.eddyelmer.com/search.htm