Search engines - The key to easier web surfing

The World Wide Web had over 800 million pages as of 1998 - just think of how many millions more have been added since that time. Searching the Web can be challenging and time-consuming, so it is important to use a good search engine to help you quickly reach the information you are seeking.

Search engines commonly go out of business, merge with one another or a new one appears. Recently, Ask Jeeves and Teoma merged. Experiment with the main search engines listed below, and make your search VERY specific. If you are looking for information about 'stars', for example, do you mean rock stars or the ones in the sky? Search engines can't read your mind. All search engines search different aspects of a web page. Some search only titles, the key words the author has added, the text and all or some of the above.

Here is a good way to start searching. This site has the most common search engines on it and tells you how to search with them.

Excellent site on search engines - recommends Google, but talks of others.

How to search the web faster - excellent site showing all links to invisible web sites.

Here's a new one that may give Google a run for its money.

Teoma - this one has just taken over Direct Hit and has merged with Ask Jeeves.

Go to Search engine watch to see the most authoritative site about search engines.

Kids Click - Web search for kids by librarians.

This is an essential site for how search engines work and when to use Boolean searching with which search engine.

A great search site for kids.

Web designers now have to pay to submit to Yahoo so not all web pages will be there, but it is a very popular search engine.

Ask Jeeves is useful because you can write your question in normal English and not worry about how you enter your keywords.

For other search engines, go to Advanced search and search as they suggest using Boolean logic. This means if you use AND between your key words this will narrow a search, OR will broaden it and NOT will ensure that you don't get a hit for something you don't want.

Here is an (almost) full list of search engines

Canadian site:

Yahoo! Canada : Google.ca

If you want to know about Australian sites, you probably need to know some Australian search engines such as:

Web Wombat : OzSearch : ANZWERS : Looksmart : Yahoo! Australia : GOEUREKA

Top 10 search engines:

Google : Altavista : Hotbot : Looksmart : alltheweb : Lycos : Teoma : msn - Microsoft : Ask Jeeves : Yahoo!

Some search engines also search other search engines. They are called meta search engines.

Some good meta search engines include:

Hotbot : Mamma : Metacrawler : Dogpile : Ixpick; and Windseek .

Don't forget about the Invisible web - information not on found on search engines but on databases, directories, etc.

Here are some more:

Another invisible web site;

For images: Yahoo Images : Google Images : Altavista find : ARTIST DIRECT : fast multimedia search : LYCOS multimedia : Free graphics library;

For maps: Graphic Maps

Hundreds of other search engines - in other languages also;

Open directory: About.com : Webbound : The WWW virtual library : The Internet Public Library : DMOZ Open directory.

One of the best Web directories is Hotsheet. It covers search portals, forums, chat, research, software, Web master resources and more - an all in one Web directory.

And last, but certainly not least, you must evaluate the Web sites that you visit. See Evaluating web sites.

Happy surfing!