Web Searcher Sites

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Table of Contents: ( of this page ) GOOGLE web searchers (and DMOZ Open Directory Project) YAHOO web searchers To-EXPERIMENT-With web searchers (A9, exalead, Gigablast, ... ; Dogpile, Clusty, ...) Web REFERENCE resources (encyclopedia, dictionary, thesarus, etc.) "DIRECT" web searchers (more --- besides Google and Yahoo) "META" web searchers (combinations of direct searchers) SITES WITH LINKS to many web searchers (including sites that "search for searchers" or "find finders") The 'direct' and 'meta' groups are basically in numero-alphabetical order by site name. End of Table of Contents ; Start of Groups of Links. Note : You can use the Find-text facility of your browser to find keywords in this page such as 'topic' or 'cluster' or 'hierarchy' or 'proximity' or 'directory' or 'phone'.

GOOGLE web searchers            (and DMOZ Open Directory Project, and other open-software-based projects) < Return to Table of Contents, above. > Google Web Search - www.google.com Google Directory (Browse web by topic) Google Image Search - image.google.com Google Blog Search (beta) - blogsearch.google.com Google Books Search (beta) - books.google.com Google Groups (beta) - groups.google.com Google News Search - news.google.com Google Finance - finance.google.com Google Spreadsheets Tour - www.google.com/googlespreadsheets/tour1.html Google-Writely Wordprocessor Tour - www.writely.com/?action=tour DMOZ = Open Directory Project - dmoz.org mozDex search engine (beta!) - mozDex.com (for more info, click on "About" and "Support" at the top of the main page ; based on DMOZ directory) Return to Table of Contents, above.

YAHOO web searchers < Return to Table of Contents, above. > Yahoo Search - search.yahoo.com Yahoo Directory - dir.yahoo.com (Browse web by topic) Yahoo Image Search - images.search.yahoo.com Yahoo Groups - groups.yahoo.com Yahoo Finance - finance.yahoo.com Yahoo Maps - maps.yahoo.com Yahoo Music - music.yahoo.com Return to Table of Contents, above.

To-EXPERIMENT-WITH web searchers (Google alternatives) < Return to Table of Contents, above. > A9 - a9.com (an amazon.com company ; use check boxes to search Wikipedia, News, Blogs, References, etc. --- instead of, or in addition to, "the web" & Books) Alexa - www.alexa.com (a large-scale search engine ; acquired by amazon.com ; click on "About Alexa" at bottom of main page ; for each result, you can click on "Site Info") Ask - www.ask.com (uses the Teoma search engine ; for description of their site ranking method, click on "About", then "Technology" ; considers quality of references to a site, not just the quantity) Bing - www.bing.com (Microsoft search engine ; new in 2009) Creative Commons Search - search.creativecommons.org (powered by Nutch-Lucene open-source search technology ; finds content that can be used, non-commercially, without having to pay or ask permission ; relatively small database of sites) exalead - www.exalead.com/search/ (use "NEAR" to specify pairs of "words at proximity" of 16 words ; click on "Help" and "Advanced Search" for other helpful options ; shows "Related Terms", i.e. categories, on the left of results, and reduced images of web pages on the right ; effective ; over 4 BILLION pages indexed in early 2006) Gigablast - gigablast.com (at top of results, suggests other keywords to add ; click on them) Scrub The Web - www.scrubtheweb.com (does not emphasize link references, i.e. 'popularity', to rank results ; rather, emphasizes content, title, meta-tags for ranking) Search Lever - www.searchlever.com (Fast access to results pages from various data sources, incl. health databases, IRS, and dictionaries.) Voila - www.voila.com (in French) Walhello (Web+valhalla+hello) - www.walhello.com (has a keyword DISTANCE/PROXIMITY setting - 50, 100, 200, ... words - see "Advanced Search" ; BUT returns too many paid links and not many relevant links ; many links no longer exist ; promising, but NEEDS WORK) WiseNut - www.wisenut.com (a LookSmart search engine ; offers WiseGuide "categories" of the results ; this helps find the "right" query) Meta-searchers: Dog Pile - www.dogpile.com (uses Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask) Clusty - clusty.com (Vivisimo technology ; uses about 6 search engines ; clusters results into topics) iBoogie - iboogie.com (searches the invisible "Deep" web ; clusters results into hierarchy of topics) Mamma - www.mamma.com (uses rSort method to rank results) MammaHealth - www.mammahealth.com (uses a DeepWeb search, of databases) Return to Table of Contents, above.

Web REFERENCE resources (encyclopedia, dictionary, thesarus, etc.) < Return to Table of Contents, above. > Wikipedia - English verion - en.wikipedia.com Dan's Search Thingys - www.danielc.com/thingy.html (offers a lot of different kinds of searches, like Wikipedia, libraries, biographies, UPS/FedEx) Search Lever - www.searchlever.com (Fast access to results pages from various data sources, incl. health databases, IRS, and dictionaries.) A9 - a9.com (an amazon.com company ; use check boxes to search Wikipedia, News, Blogs, References, etc. --- instead of, or in addition to, "the web" & Books) Return to Table of Contents, above.

"DIRECT" web searchers (in numero-alphabetical order by site name) < Return to Table of Contents, above. > A9 - a9.com (an amazon.com company ; use check boxes to search Wikipedia, News, Blogs, References, etc. --- instead of, or in addition to, "the web" & Books) About Search - search.about.com (some categories presented, for quick hits ; seems to show mostly paid sites and very few "hits" ; very frustrating and almost useless) About - www.about.com ("busy" main page) Alexa - www.alexa.com (a large-scale search engine ; acquired by amazon.com; click on "About Alexa" at bottom of main page ; for each result, you can click on "Site Info") AltaVista - www.altavista.com (offers language translation ; shows sponsored links at top and bottom of each results page ; obtrusive & annoying) alltheweb - www.alltheweb.com (owned by Yahoo ; different results from Yahoo search) Ask - www.ask.com (uses the Teoma search engine ; for description of their site ranking method, click on "About", then "Technology" ; considers quality of references to a site, not just the quantity) Creative Commons Search - search.creativecommons.org (powered by Nutch-Lucene open-source search technology ; finds content that can be used, non-commercially, without having to pay or ask permission ; relatively small database of sites) Direct Hit - www.directhit.com (uses Teoma, which is used by ask.com) EntireWeb - www.entireweb.com (see "About", then "Search Technology" for their method ; developed in Sweden ; based on 500 million indexed documents) exalead - www.exalead.com (use "NEAR" to specify pairs of "words at proximity" of 16 words ; click on "Help" and "Advanced Search" for other helpful options ; shows "Related Terms", i.e. categories, on the left of results, and reduced images of web pages on the right ; effective : over 4 BILLION pages indexed in early 2006) Find Articles - findarticles.com (affiliated with LookSmart) Gigablast - gigablast.com (at top of results, suggests other keywords to add ; click on them) GoTo - www.go2.com (finds businesses, categories) Google - www.google.com (#1 in popularity) HotBot - www.hotbot.com (uses Ask or Google ; can specify a date range) Infoseek - www2.infoseek.com (now www.go.com ; uses Yahoo search ; "busy" main page) Iwon - www.iwon.com (uses Ask ; "busy" main page) Kanoodle - www.kanoodle.com (info mainly ; for advertisers, about sponsored links) LookSmart - www.looksmart.com (the method of this engine is not well explained ; see the "About Us" link at the bottom of the main page) Lycos Search - search.lycos.com (has a date range option ; many sponsored links at the top of each results page ; annoying) Lycos portal - www.lycos.com ("busy" main page) MSN Search - search.msn.com (MSN search is 3rd in usage, after Google & Yahoo) MSN (Microsoft) portal - www.msn.com ("busy" main page) Northern Light - www.northernlight.com (info only, on their search engine offerings) Open Directory Project - www.dmoz.com (presents categories --- and a search field) Netscape Search - channels.netscape.com/search/ (a shadow of its former self ; search is "enhanced by" Google) Netscape portal - www.netscape.com (a "busy" page ; annoying popup) Overture - www.overture.com (pop-down menu of countries ; a Yahoo company) Pipeline - www.pipeline-search.com (shows cluster of topics to left of results) Scrub The Web - www.scrubtheweb.com (does not emphasize link references, i.e. 'popularity', to rank results ; rather, emphasizes content, title, meta-tags for ranking) SearchHippo - www.searchhippo.com (indexing is based mostly on DMOZ sites; uses a fairly literal search of your terms ; see the "About" & "Help" options ; there is a detailed description of the spidering and search logic ; may return a home page that does not contain your terms --- try a search box on that page ; frustrating) Teoma - www.teoma.com (redirects to ask.com) Voila - www.voila.com (in French) Walhello (Web+valhalla+hello) - www.walhello.com (has a keyword DISTANCE/PROXIMITY setting - 50, 100, 200, ... words - see "Advanced Search" ; BUT returns too many paid links and not many relevant links ; many links no longer exist ; promising, but NEEDS WORK) WiseNut - www.wisenut.com (a LookSmart search engine ; offers WiseGuide "categories" of the results ; this helps find the "right" query) Yahoo portal - www.yahoo.com ("busy" main page) Yahoo Search - search.yahoo.com (simple main page ; see "Advanced Search" ; offers an "updated in past N months" option) Return to Table of Contents, above.

"META" web searchers (in numero-alphabetical order by site name) < Return to Table of Contents, above. > 1 Second - www.1second.com (uses about 14 search-engines & web-directories ; throws out duplicates and summarizes) Alfa Seek - www.alfaseek.com (one search engine at a time ; about 14) Beaucoup - www.beaucoup.com (one search engine at a time ; about 10) Better Brain - www.betterbrain.com ("busy" main page) Byte Dog - www.bytedog.com (also has Categories ; Canadian ; aims to rank & reduce results) Clusty - clusty.com (Vivisimo technology ; uses about 6 search engines ; clusters results into topics) Dan's Search Thingys - www.danielc.com/thingy.html (offers a lot of different kinds of searches, like Wikipedia, libraries, biographies, UPS/FedEx) Dog Pile - www.dogpile.com (uses Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask) Excite - www.excite.com ("busy" main page) Experts Avenue - www.expertsavenue.com ("busy" main page) Express Find - www.expressfind.com (offers 12 separate SE's ; "busy" main page) ez2find - www.ez2find.com ("busy" main page) find.com - www.find.com (uses Scientigo search technology for "Auto Topification") Freeality - www.freeality.com (offers about 9 separate "direct" SE's) Freeality Meta's - www.freeality.com/meta.htm (offers about 10 separate "meta" SE's) iBoogie - iboogie.com (searches the invisible "Deep" web ; clusters results into hierarchy of topics) Gimenei - www.gimenei.com (heavily laden with ads ; said to be based in Manhattan) GoGettem - www.gogettem.com ("busy" main page ; UK shopping directory) IceRocket - www.icerocket.com (defaults to search Blogs instead of Web) Ilectric - www.ilectric.com (proprietary sorting and ranking system ; see "About Us") InfoGrid - www.infogrid.com ("very busy" main page ; offers choice of search engines) Infospace - www.infospace.com (to find businesses or people) InfoNetware - www.infonetware.com (uses "RealTerm" technology ; sorts results into topics ; Australian) Internav - www.internav.com ("busy"main page ; categories ; quick thesaurus-dictionary) Invisible Web - www.invisibleweb.com (searches info databases, not just web pages) Ixquick - www.ixquick.com/eng (multi-lingual ; multi-search-engine "power search" with "result honing" ; phone-number search works well) KillerInfo - www.killerinfo.com (uses clustering to organize results, from up to 10 sources ; can choose the sources) Mamma - www.mamma.com (uses rSort method to rank results) MammaHealth - www.mammahealth.com (uses DeepWeb search, of databases) MetaBear - www.metabear.com (Russian meta-search engine) Meta Crawler - www.metacrawler.com (uses Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask ; similar to webcrawler.com) MyProwler - www.myprowler.com (allows quick choice of SE's, up to 15 ; filters and clusters results) Net Depot - www.netdepot.org (allows quick selection of about 15 SE's ; fast display of start page; has about 6 tech categories at bottom of page) Planet Search - www.planetsearch.com (pop-down offers many types of searches ; uses about 7 SE's) Livelink Federated Query Server - www.queryserver.com/web.htm (searches external & internal databases, at least 8 ; from OpenText Corp. ; allows some options in clustering of results) Search.com - www.search.com (affiliated with CNET ; uses Google, Ask, LookSmart, and many others) Search Lever - www.searchlever.com (Fast access to results pages from various data sources, incl. health databases, IRS, and dictionaries.) SearchThingy - www.searchthingy.com/search.asp (allows you to check which search engines to use, about 10) Search Wiz - www.searchwiz.com (uses about 6 SE's ; aims to avoid clutter of ads & news) Turbo10 - www.turbo10.com (searches the "Deep Net") Vinden.NL - www.vinden.nl (in Dutch ; uses Google, Yahoo, MSN, AllTheWeb, AltaVista, Ask=Teoma) Vivisimo - www.vivisimo.com (developed at Carnegie-Mellon ; used for clusty.com) Vroosh (countries) - www.vroosh.com/countries.html (can specify a country to search, and language) Web Crawler - www.webcrawler.com (uses Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, About, LookSmart, and more ; similar to metacrawler.com) ZapMeta - www.zapmeta.com (claims no banner or popup ads, from their site) Return to Table of Contents, above.

SITES WITH LINKS to many web searchers (including sites that "search for searchers" or "find finders") < Return to Table of Contents, above. > Google Directory for WEB SEARCH ENGINES - www.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Searching/Search_Engines/ (see the links at the bottom of the page --- or click on categories such as "Specialized" or "Google" or "Yahoo") Google Directory for WEB DIRECTORIES (categorized links, by topic) - www.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Searching/Directories/ (see the links at the bottom of the page --- or click on categories such as "Specialized" or "Non-Commercial" or "Yahoo") Yahoo Directory for WEB SEARCH ENGINES AND DIRECTORIES - dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/ Searching_the_Web/Search_Engines_and_Directories/ (see the links at the bottom of the page --- or click on categories such as "Comparisons and Reviews" or "Directories" or "All-in-One Search Pages") AllSearchEngines.com - www.allsearchengines.com (includes a directory = categories of search engines) Direct Search (of Gary Price) - www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htm ("busy" page of deep web info --- databases, etc.) Finder Seeker - www.finderseeker.com (a finder of search engines) Leiden University, Netherlands - www.leidenuniv.nl/ub/biv/specials.htm (a collection of special search engines & data sources) Quick Found - quickfound.net (mostly news & weather search engines ; "very busy" page) SearchBug - www.searchbug.com (search for people or companies) Search Engines and Subject Indexes - www.sldirectory.com/search.html (not too "busy" page) Search Engine Colossus - www.searchenginecolossus.com (organized by countries ; a world-wide directory) Search Engine Guide - www.searchengineguide.com/searchengines.html ("busy" page ; includes directories, deep web tools, etc.) Search Enginez - www.searchenginez.com (nice categories of search engines, including translators) SearchItAll - www.searchitall.net ("busy" page ; directories/categories maintained by 50,000 volunteers ; annoying banner ads ; owned by SearchBug) Search Engines Worldwide - home.inter.net/takakuwa/search/ (takes several clicks to get to a search engine ; try U.S.A --- it has over 1,000 SE's ; most countries here have less than 10) Ultimate Search Engine Links page - www.searchenginelinks.co.uk (takes several clicks to get to a search engine) VirtualFreeSites, Search Engines - www.virtualfreesites.com/search.html (kind of a nuisance to find good links) Return to Table of Contents, above.

I'm still looking for a better search engine.
Here is a suggestion for a major improvement.

Bottom of Web Searchers page. There are many more 'meta' search engines out there. They come and go. And 'direct' search engines seem to get absorbed/acquired/merged into others. You can put the names of a few of these meta-searchers in Google --- to find web pages that provide links to even more "meta-search" engines. And, thus, you may also find more "direct-search" engines. To see some current, best-of-class search engines, you can see the bottom of a search page of the DMOZ Open Directory Project (dmoz.org). In July 2006, the search engine links being shown at the bottom of ODP results pages were AltaVista - A9 - AOL - Clusty - Gigablast - Google - Lycos - MSN - Teoma - WiseNut - Yahoo To return to a previously visited web page location, click on the Back button of your web browser, a sufficient number of times. OR, use the History-list option of your web browser. OR, ... < Return to TOP of page, above. > < Return to Table of Contents, above. > < Return to Home page. > Or you can scroll up, toward the top of this page. Page was created 2006 Apr 22. Link added 2009 Aug 07.