Beginners InterNet Search Tools
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Indexes for Beginners
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- Magellan: permits searching among 18 categories. Good search tips.
- Web Search: is well organized and highly rated.
- Yahoo: is the most "friendly" and popular index on the InterNet, where "you'll find hundreds of thousands of web sites, categorized into 14 top-level categories, from Arts and Humanities to Society and Culture." Note: Yahooligans: was designed just for kids.
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Text Searching for Beginners
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- Ask Jeeves: is "the first natural language search service--with a massive Knowledgebase of 6 million answers to the most popular questions asked online.... allowing anyone to ask a question in plain, simple English without having to use keywords or Boolean search strings."
- Encyclopedia.Com: contains more than 14,000 articles from the Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. The free reports are brief, about one paragraph, but useful for checking facts, and they provide 170,000 links to related WWW sites.
- Google: using new technology their "analysis allows Google to estimate the quality, or importance, of every web page it returns." Importance is explained here.
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Intermediate Indexes
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- Alta Vista Categories: provides a user-friendly visual pattern to organize close to 17,000 subjects into 13 categories.
- BUBL: Information Service: Search using either the: Dewey, Subject, or Expanded Subject lists to access more than 1300 subject terms, with at least five relevant resources for each subject.
- Digital Librarian: has managed to classify worthy sites on the InterNet into 90 categories.
- Galaxy: is the "oldest browsable/searchable web directory." They index only pages submitted to them, and they periodically re-index sites to discover and fix bad links.
- LookSmart: uses 10 major (60 minor) categories.
- Lycos: uses 14 major categories. Also contains brief news.
- Powerlinks: offers 15 categories or a word search.
- Re: QUEST dot net: "is an online library of internet and reference resources offering links" in 20 top level categories.
- Snap.: Their web search starts with 17 categories, but also current text search, news, maps, etc.
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InterNet Meta Search Tools
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- 37.com: Type once, get results from up to 37 search engines!
- byteSearch: "requests information from each major search engine...stores the results, formats them, removes duplicates, and prints them out in an easily managable form." Fast.
- Debriefing: is easy to use. Slow sometimes.
- Dogpile: You can also search Usenet, or for weather, stock, and business news.
- HuskySearch: at the University of Washington has Java and three speed search options.
- Inference Find: is a powerful parallel search tool that, like Alta Vista, requires experience to use its full capabilities. Great for long phrase searches.
- Ixquick: "Ixquick features a nifty star rating system for reporting results...the more likely it appears in the top ten list of major search engines.
- Mamma: is a "smart" meta search engine that will analyze your request, format the words for each source, organizes the results into a uniform format, and then presents them by relevance and source.
- MatchSite compiles "responses from the different internet search engines based on the URL, into a list ranked from zero to 1000. The scores are then rated and listed based on these results."
- MetaCrawler: Go2Net acquired MetaCrawler in 1997 and set the goal "to maintain MetaCrawler's position as the fastest and most useful metasearch tool on the Net." Business oriented.
- ProFusion: Provides user options and artificial intelligence technology to extracts information before prioritizing the results eliminating duplicates.
- Proteus: provides guide boxes for delimiting searching by phrase or URL, etc. for 8 popular engines.
- SavvySearch: is one of the most comprehensive meta-search engines, using more than "200 search engines, guides, auctions, storefronts, Usenet archives, news archives, shareware libraries," etc.
- SearchHound: offers default child safe searches and optional parallel searching using 24 other search engines providing results in the five categories of Websites | Software | Stocks | People | News.
- Seek123: provides meta search and a wide variety of links.
- TheBigHub: formerly iSleuth, permits searching multiple engines, Web directories and news databases simultaneously.
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Intermediate Text Searching
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- Direct Hit: seeks to build the world's most accurate search engine.
- Encyclopedia Britannica: search "the world's best Web sites, plus related books, selections from leading magazines, and the complete Encyclopædia Britannica."
- Fast Search: seeks to build the most advanced and fastest search engine. They also use the Lycos FTP search.
- KidFusion: Search using one or all six tools designed for kids.
- MyGo: use for text search or as a directory.
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Advanced InterNet Search Tools
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InterNet Indexes
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InterNet Search Clusters
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- All-In-One provides links to more than 500 search engines, databases, indexes.
- AllSearchEngines.com groups search engines into 27 categories.
- AskJack offers a variety of links to news, search engines, etc. from England.
- Beaucoup: links to approximately 800 categorized search tools, such as media, geographically specific, software, literature, education, music, arts, etc.
- FinderSeeker: permits searching for search engines, by category and country. Fast.
- Pioneer: an annotated list of the most important search tools.
- Search Engine Guide: links to more than 3,400 search tools, including their Meta search tools.
- Search Engines Worldwide: literally opens the world of search to anyone.
- webtaxi.com: is a "breakthrough navigation service designed to help Internet users conveniently search the World Wide Web."
- Worldwide Web Search Engines: A nice list from Amdahl.
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InterNet Text Searching
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- Alta Vista: provides a powerful search through its entire "Web index -- approximately 200 Gigabytes of data -- in less than a second." But you need to understand how to use this tool.
- Automated Repetitive Search: Informant, or NetMind, for repeated searches on the same topic over time.
- HotBot: "indexes every word, link, and media file on more than 110 million Web documents and refreshes its entire database of documents every three to four weeks."
- Northern Light: presents the 25 strongest hits using your search term(s). What makes Northern Light different is that, much like Metafind and Inference Find, it also clusters the results of its hits into "Custom Search Folders."
- Personalized Searching: Excite, or TracerLock, or WebCrawler.
- WebBrain "lets you search the Web visually, so you can explore a dynamic picture of related information."
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Evaluated InterNet Sites
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- Argus Clearinghouse: evaluates 13 categories of sites according to five criteria, and then provides one to five check marks for each site it lists.
- Science: Popular Science has provided links to the top 50 science-related sites on the InterNet (in 10 categories).
- Scout Report Signpost: is compiled by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is funded by the National Science Foundation. Signpost contains more than 3,700 reports catalogued using the Library of Congress classification.
- SelectSurf" All sites are evaluated by an evaluation team on the basis of content, usefulness, presentation, ease of use, and originality. Uses 18 categories.
- StudyWEB: "was created to provide fast and easy access to a wide variety of research-quality information via the Internet," and it lists 30 categories, evaluated using 1 to 4 apples, and also tied to approximate grade level.
- World's Best Websites: Gives awards to "exemplary sites that redefine standards of website excellence. The criteria employed are among the most rigorous on the Internet."
- Yep.com: Provides two evaluations based on Quality (10 criteria) and Popularity--determined by surfer data only if registered at HitBOX.
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Guides to InterNet Sites
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Human Guides
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- About.com has approximately 700 guides and 28 top level categories. Was originally called the Mining Company which led the revolution to volunteer guides.
- Allexperts.com: "features thousands of volunteers in medicine, arts, TV, sports, music, travel, humanities, love, education, business, religion, etc.," where you can ask a question.
- 4anything.com: uses editors and advertising to construct 14 category sites, such as 4autoinsurance.com, 4baseball.com, and more than 550 city sites such as newyork.com.
- Focused Portals: For: Communications, Free Stuff, Information Technology, Jobs, Libraries, Programmers, U.S. Government, Zoos.
- NerdWorld: All sites in the search and subject index are submitted and then reviewed and organized into one of 10,000 categories. Provides a numerical score, and then clusters its findings.
- Open Directory Project: uses human editors to compile a thorough and organized set of categories of links. Their "goal is to produce the most comprehensive directory of the web."
- Netscape Search has 15 categories that "relies on real people rather than automated web crawlers to find and categorize web sites."
- Suite101.com: uses "Contributing Editors who have published more than 13,000 online articles on topics ranging from politics to pets to gardening," etc. in 11 categories.
- Websearchexperts: "adds a real human interface to all Web search requests" and sends results by e-mail, offering personalized searching for a fee. Sometimes slow.
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How To on the InterNet
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How To & FAQs
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- Book Purchasing: AddALL compares book prices and services among 41 stores, or BestBookBuys. compares prices from 28 book stores, or Even Better: compares prices for books, movies, and music. Both Advanced Book Exchange and BookFinder locate out of print or used, rare, and antiquarian books. Try ISDN.NU to search specific stores by ISDN number.
- eShop "has red-flagged or recommended over 100,000 products and services, including cell phones, baby bottles, books, colleges, casinos, rock bands and running shoes."
- eShop: is an interactive buyers guide for comparison shopping.
- eHow: says they are "the most comprehensive source of information on how to do things, offering thousands of specific project instructions."
- FAQs: include E-mail FAQ, and Internet FAQ Archives.
- Finding News, or Finding newsgroups.
- Find People: Try EgoSurf, or Finding People, or MESA, or Reverse Lookup.
- How Stuff Works: From engines through computers to food, this is the place.
- JunkBusters: for learning how to prevent and minimize junk e-mail.
- Learn2: has 12 learning categories, and is searchable.
- PC Show & Tell: has thousands of tips for more than 50 computer software programs.
- Searching: Tutorial: by AskScott includes a test, or Search Engine Showdown.
- WWW: Web Accessibility or WWW Design Resources.
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Tools on the InterNet
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Tools
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- Converters: Bookmarks, or Calculators, or Calendar, or Currency.
- Client Search Tools: Alexa, Bullseye, Copernic, Express Search, Gold Rush, GuruNET, or Watson.
- InteractiveTest: create interactive multiple-choice quizzes.
- Language Dictionaries: 1OneLook, RefDesk, Rivendel, travlang, Web On Line, or Yahoo's Foreign Dictionaries
- Language Translators: Alta Vista, FreeTranslation, Go.Com, InterTran, or these lists: IPL, Translation Guide, Translate-Free, Working Dog, or Martindale's Dictionaries and Translator List.
- Measure 4 Measure: a large annotated collection of conversion and estimation tools for Science / Math, Health, Finance, and others.
- Research-It includes several dictionaries (English, computing, rhyme, pronounciation), biographical and quotation search, geographical, shipping, and financial, tools.
- Statistical Calculations: information and resources to perform statistical analyses.
- The Reference Desk: an eclectic and comprehensive information source, hosted by Jim Martindale at the University of California, Irvine.
- VOIP: Dialpad, Firetalk, IRIS Phone, Net2Phone, MedaRing, My Free LD, PhoneFree, Zeroplus for free long distance calls over the InterNet. Or consider Pulver's enhanced list.
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Topical InterNet Search Resources
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Topic
Specific
Search
Sites
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- Academic (mostly university level) research sites include: Alpha Search, Infomine or MEL.
- Biographies: Astronauts, Composers, Congress, First Ladies, Founding Fathers, Mathematicians, Miscellaneous (A&E), Miscellaneous (Lives), Presidents, Pulitzer Prize Winners, and Who's Who.
- Books on the InterNet: On-Line Books Page: a complete list of books on-line, available by author, subject, or title.
- Critical Mass: Linkaway2 provides a wide variety of search capability and information, as well as useful links to business, education, government, health, news, travel, etc.
- Direct Search: is an extensive and eclectic list of InterNet "resources that are not easily searchable from general search tools such as Alta Vista, Hotbot, and Infoseek."
- Discussion Groups: DejaNews: is "where you can read, search, participate in and subscribe to more than 80,000 discussion forums, including Usenet newsgroups." or Discussions, or RmarQ or Talkway.
- Genealogy sites include: Ancestry.Com, Cyndi's List, FamilySearch, Roots-L. or Vital Records.
- Government: American Fact Finder, for Census information, or Frequently Used Sites, an annotated list of links to Business, Census, Congress, Consumer, Crime, Education, Foreign, Health, Natural Resources, Scientific, etc., or Gov Documents Resources, a rich source for U.S. Government documents or NAIL, the National Archives and Records Administration's database containing thousands of still pictures, maps, sound recordings and textual documents, or Thomas, the U.S. legislative information site hosted by the Library of Congress to provide the facts about Congress, including bills, votes, the Congressional Record, committee information, and historical documents.
- HTML sites for: Beginners, Intermediate, Advanced,
Color, Converters, Editors, Help, Image optimizer, References, Templates, and Validation.
- Images: Try: ARTHUR or AV Photo Finder or Berkeley's Image Finder or ditto.com or Image Surfer or The Amazing Picture Machine or WebSEEK.
- Information Please: "Between 1938 and 1952, Information Please was the leading radio quiz show." Here you can search their extensive almanacs, encyclopedia, and dictionary.
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International: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, International Organization Network, New Zealand, Search Europe, United Kingdom, or World Sites Europe.
- InterNet: Atlas, Bandwidth, Big Picture, Demographics, Domain Survey, Glossary, Geography, History (Web Ref), History (Internet Soc.), ISPs, Packet Loss, Topics, Traffic Report.
- K-12 Education: Blue Web'n has 12 categories using the Dewey system, or Internet Training, or PBS TeacherSource, which correlates its classroom activities to National & state curriculum standards, or Searchopolis, a filtered tool designed for K-12 Students.
- Investigator's Toolkit: provides brief annotated links to an assortment of resources for researchers.
- Keeping Current: Nowhere are the detail, scope, and variety on the InterNet more visible than in those sites that attempt to track what is most current, such as: Daily Diffs, Digital Librarian, Neat New Stuff, Net Happenings, Research Buzz, and URLwire.
- Legal information can be found at: Counsel Quest, Internet Law Library, LawCrawler, and LawRunner, four comprehensive sites, as well as at Nolo's Legal Encyclopedia.
- Maps: Atlas of the World, CyberMaps, Map Library, Map Machine, MapQuest, Maps On Us, MapServer, Microsoft's TerraServer, or Xerox PARC Map Viewer.
- Multimedia: MediaFreak: for art, dance, e-commerce, film, magazines, publishing, radio/TV, & writers' resources, etc., or Ultimate Midi Page, a very large source of midi music, or for MP3, or Scour.net.
- News: AJR, AP World, BBC, CNN, Fused News, Global Beat, Magazine Rack, NewsTracker, NewsWatch, TV Archives, or World News by Continent.
- Periodicals: Scholarly Journals.
- Public Interest: Center for Public Interest.
- RingWorld: is the WebRing search site that aligns InterNet homepages by content, and includes more than half a million sites. An index is available too.
- U.S. Newspapers, and their U.S. archives, and Non-US archives. For National coverage, link to the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, (which includes the ability to search), or USA Today.
- Technology: Whatis?: contains over 2,000 encyclopedic definition/topics.
- Weather: Weather.com: Just type in your or any ZIP code and get a five day report, or WeatherNex: provides "access to thousands of forecasts, images, and the Net's largest collection of weather links."
- Words: Acronyms and Abbreviations, Acronym Finder, Glossary of Literary Terms, Human Languages Page, Merriam-Webster OnLine, OneLook Dictionaries, Phrase Finder, Phrase & Fable, Quotes, Semantic Rhyming Dictionary, Webster's Unabridged, WordNet, Worksheet Generator, World Wide Words or Ye Olde English.
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