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NWE Help: Web: Searching: All Searching
NWE Home :: Help :: Web :: Searching
Here is a list of all the search engines we recommend. Please let us know of any others you like, or if you think any of these links are not working properly.
Search Engines
Search engines are generally faster than the meta-search engines and also offer sophisticated search options that can help you increase the relevance of your results. They may also represent URLs not actively promoted, such as University or other non-commerical sites. Many of these sites offer very specific options. Caveat lector.
| Alltheweb | Alltheweb promises speed and often delivers. It's partially an ad for Dell, so it lacks those annoying banners. |
| Alta Vista | Orignally started to advertise Digital's Alpha servers, Alta Vista has grown and is now one of the best-known of all search resources. However, it's just been sold (3 July 1999) and will become a &$@!# "portal" site. Sigh. |
| Excite | Excite is now geared towards customization -- with "My Excite," you can make Excite look more or less like you want to. |
| Google uses super-cool algorithms to produce very accurate searches. Highly recommended. | |
| Go Network | Infoseek was sucked into Disney's Go Network. It also allows a high degree of customization. |
| HotBot | Wired Digital's search engine Hotbot has great search options, reasonable speed, and a good database. It now offers index options as well. |
| Kartoo | KartOO is a metasearch engine with visual display interfaces so it can show maps of the visual relationships between search topics. |
| Lycos | Lycos began at Carnegie Mellon University but has expended drastically. |
| Northern Light | Northern Light indexes a collection of journals, books, magazines, and other references. It uses a nifty folder organization system to make searching easier. Can be a bit slow. |
Subject Indices
Subject indices depend upon users to submit their URLs to the subject listing, or upon a combination of crawlers and verification schemes, so at times they overrepresent commercial interests. However, they are browsable, unlike search engines.
| Internet Public Library | The IPL is an attempt to make an noncommercial online public library. Try the reference pages. Lots of information on many subjects. Hosted at the University of Michigan. |
| Yahoo | One of the first by-subject listings, Yahoo has grown tremendously. It's one of the few big 'Net companies actually making money. |
| Netscape Netcenter | A "portal" site which has links to many search engines, subject indexes, email, news, and other things. |
| Galaxy | Yet another comprehensive subject listing... |
Email Address and Phone Numbers
If you're trying to find someone, this is the way to go. Do a search for your own name and see how many others of you there are in the US.
| UF's Phone Directory | Information about UF students, faculty, and staff. Updates through this interface have been 'temporarily' suspended since Summer 1997 because the phonebook people don't have a clue. Oh well. |
| Internet Address Finder | 6.7 million listings, so they say: "Add your listing today so that your friends, family, and colleagues can keep in touch with you." |
| Yahoo! People Search | Search emails, names, and other stuff. Also has links to other search engines and people finders. |
| Switchboard | This site used to be just phone numbers, but they've become a portal site (just like every other (*@^#! place on the Net). |
| Super Pages | From GTE, what claims to be a national Yellow Pages. |
| Bell South Yellow Pages | More yellow pages. You can use this one to search Gainesville only. |
Image, video, and audio files
If you're looking for an image to add to your web pages, these can help. Searching from home can be frustrating because of long download times--
| Google's Image search | Searches the amazingly extensive Google database for images. |
| Altavista Media Finder | Searches the AltaVista database for images and other media files. |
| Yahoo Image Surf | Internet Image Catalogs from Yahoo! |
Email Lists
Just in case you don't get enough email already... here's an opportunity to further increase the size of your inbox.
| Search PAML | Search a listing of Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists. This has a wide variety of subjects. |
| CataList | They call themselves the official catalog of LISTSERV lists. |
Meta-search Engines
Meta-search engines combine the resources of multiple individual search engines and databases. They can take a while to run, but generally provide excellent results.
| The Big Hub | This used to be Internet Sleuth. It offers connections to subject indices as well as a direct meta-search service. Somewhat garish. |
| C|net's Search.Com | Lots of search engines, rolled up into one and powered by Infoseek. |
| MetaCrawler | Metacrawler, aka Go2Net Network, is one of the original meta-search engines. It used to be part of the University of Washington. |
| Mamma | The mother of all search engines, or so they say. |
| Dogpile | Dogpile, part of the Go2Net Network, searches 28 search engines and reports the results to you. |
Other Search Tools
Here are a smattering of useful search resources that don't fit into any of the categories listed above.
| Ask Jeeves | Ask this sucker a question, and you get the answer, to some extent. Very cool. |
| UT Internet Search | A comprehensive search page at the University of Texas. Includes libraries, email addresses, newsgroups and listservs. |