Searching Resources
| Global Search Engines (6) | How to Search (6) |
| Multi Search Engines (1) | Search Strategy Worksheets (5) |
| Specialty Search Engines (3) | Web Directories (2) |
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Global Search Engines
- Ask Formerly AskJeeves. Has a fairly nice selection of advanced operators.
- Bing Microsoft's newest search engine.
- Blekko A very interesting new search engine, featuring both "slashtags" to search preset groups of sites (with the ability for users to create new slashtags for new groups) and a variety of SEO tools to gather additional information about any given site. Particularly useful for searchers are the inbound links tool and the duplicate content tool.
- Exalead A search engine with some interesting advanced operators, including proximity search.
- Google Google... it's practically a synonym for search. Let's just hope they remember their motto: "Don't Be Evil".
- Yandex.com English language version of Yandex, a global search engine based in Russia. Has some interesting features, particular when advanced operators are used. Search around for a cheatsheet or two.
How to Search
- DESIRE Information Gateways Handbook A guide to creating internet gateways. Searchers should especially check out section 2.2: Resource Discovery.
- General and Efficient Strategies for Information Retrieval A paper on efficient strategies for information retrieval. Figure 1 has everything neatly summarized.
- Internet Search Challenge Learn to search by defeating challenges, learning new skills along the way.
- Searching Databases - Strategies and Heuristics A paper on search strategies and rules of thumb.
- Searchlores Fravia+'s Searchlores: The definitive site on how to search effectively.
- Social Sciences FAQ: Search Strategies An overview of search techniques, geared towards Social Science students and academics.
Multi Search Engines
- Search!o Rather comprehensive multi-search, covering a variety of topics including social bookmarking.
Search Strategy Worksheets
- Alverno College Library Database Search Strategy Worksheet This worksheet suggests the inclusion of brand names, generic names, and abbreviations in your search as well as synonyms and alternate phrases.
- Humboldt State University Library Search Strategy Worksheet A worksheet to help you prepare your search strategy.
- San Fransisco State University Database Search Strategy Worksheet This worksheet suggests the inclusion of additional information such as desired language, time period, periodical title, etc.
- University of Otago Search Strategy Worksheet Another worksheet to help you formulate a search strategy.
- ~S~ Topic tablet An elegant topic tablet, instructions, and examples of its use.
Specialty Search Engines
- BoardReader A search engine for message board posts and threads.
- IncyWincy A search engine attempting to index the invisible web. Can filter your results by pages containing searches and by pages containing forms.
- Oggleus Oggleus claims to be the world's first "live-indexing" search engine. What this means is that, upon being queried, it checks its index for results returning 4xx and 5xx error messages or with slow or non-responsive servers. It then removes these bad sites before displaying each page of your search results. May falsely remove some sites, but all sites removed from your results can be optionally displayed. Doesn't seem great at the moment, but an interesting addition to the world of search engines if it can build upon this concept and improve itself.
Web Directories
- DMOZ Open Directory Project An attempt to create the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It's not bad, but in practice a lot depends on the editors assigned to each area and many sections can become stale over time.
- Yahoo! The granddaddy of web directories, Yahoo is probably one of the oldest still-operating search portals on the internet. Its associated search engine is currently powered by Microsoft's "Bing!".