Search Engines and Directories

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Google | Google U.S Government Search | Google Scholar (Beta) | Yahoo!

Below are links to some search engines and directories selected by librarians. For detailed reviews, ratings, and statistics, as well as tips on using search engines see Search Engine Watch or Search Engine Showdown.

Search Engines

Google
Arguably the best engine out there for speed and accuracy, Google ranks every website's importance based on which other sites link to it. Help

Google Scholar (Beta)
Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Google Scholar Help

Google U.S. Government Search
Searches government and military sites.

alltheweb (FAST)
Allthe web (FAST) is one of the largest and fastest growing search engines. Help

AltaVista
AltaVista's search technology has consistently been a performance leader since it was pioneered by the company as one of the first search services ever available, measured both by users and objective outside sources. Help

Answers.com
Searches factual information provided by various information publishers.

HotBot
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. Help

Subject Directories

Yahoo!
Yahoo!'s strength lies in the fact that it is subject index that has been cataloged by humans rather than indexed by machines, thus eliminating many irrelevant sites. Help

Scout Report Archives
The Scout Report Archives contains only the best Internet resources, as chosen by the editorial staff of the Scout Report, which have been cataloged and organized for efficient browsing and searching.

Internet Public Library
The Internet Public Library is a public service organization and a learning/teaching environment at the University of Michigan School of Information. They also provide an on-line reference service.

Invisible Web Directory
A directory of some of the best resources the Invisible Web has to offer from reliable information providers that are not visible to general-purpose search engines. It is compiled by Chris Sherman and Gary Price.

Bubl Links
British directory of selected resources covering all academic subject areas. Help

INFOMINE
14,000+ scholarly internet resource collections. Help

Librarians' Index to the Internet
A searchable, annotated subject directory of more than 5,000 Internet resources selected and evaluated by librarians. Help

WWW Virtual Library
Selective catalog of resources oriented primarily, though not exclusively, toward academic research. Help

Beaucoup!
Directory of 2,500+ search engines organized by category and subject.

Yahoo's Searching the Web List
Lots of other choices.

Subject-Specific Gateways

For a more focused search, try these subject-specific tools.

Anthro.Net
Thousands of reviewed web sites and bibliographic references for anthropology, archaeology, history, linguistics, psychology, sociology and other social sciences.

Eco-Portal
Perform full-text searches of reviewed environmental Internet content. "Dedicated to Making the Internet Useful for the Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability..."

Environmental Organization WebDirectory
Annotated, searchable subject directory.

Femina: Web Search for Women
Searchable directory of links to female-friendly sites and information.

FinanceWise
Every topic, from risk management to syndicated finance and equities is indexed in depth, with the contents of each site evaluated by editorial staff.

FindLaw - LawCrawler
Search engine for internet law sites.

Firstgov
Portal to federal government resources on the web. Indexes over 20,000 federal website, plus reports and documents. Lists federal web servers.

Google Uncle Sam
Fast search engine for U.S. federal government and military sites.

Medical Matrix
Ranked, peer-reviewed, annotated, updated clinical medicine resources. Requires registration.

Neurosciences on the Internet
Covers neurobiology, neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry, psychology, cognitive science sites and information on human neurological diseases.

PhysicsWeb
A comprehensive listing of physics and related WWW resources. Lists include all the major fields in physics, education, history of science, science news, student information and more.

PsychCrawler
A product of the American Psychological Association created to provide quick access to quality content in the field of psychology on the web.

Science.gov
Science.gov is a gateway to authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. Government agencies, including research and development results.

Scirus.com
Focuses on sites with scientific content and provides links to some full-text articles and citations for others articles.

The SocioWeb
Guide to sociological resources on the Internet. Designed and maintained by a Mark Blair, a sociology graduate student at Sonoma State University.

WWWomen!
"The Premier Search Directory for Women Online!"

Meta-Search Engines

These services allow you to search two or more search engines simultaneously.

Beaucoup Meta and Parallel Engines
List of meta search engines plus Beacoup Super Search that searches ten engines simultaneously.

Dogpile
Uses over 20 different search engines to "fetch" results from Web, Usenet, FTP and Newswire sources.

MetaCrawler (from go2net)
Fast searches; easy to read summaries. Sends your search to Lycos, Infoseek, WebCrawler, Excite, AltaVista, and Yahoo!.

ProFusion
Uses 9 different search engines. Merges and ranks search results in a single list with URLs.

Search.com
Limits to 50 hits per search engine. Many options for refining searches. Allows searching in 24 languages.

Vivisimo.com
Uses other search engines and classifies the results.

Special Purpose Tools

AltaVista Translation Service
Computerized (i.e., not perfect) translation of a web page from/to these languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Big List of Blog Search Engines
A large checklist of blog and rss search engines.

International Blog Search Engines
An international equivalent of the above.

Bookfinder.com
Search engine that scans top book databases to find new, used, rare, and out-of-print books.

Google groups
Access to archived Usenet groups of various subjects including what was Deja News.

Searchpdf.adobe.com
Search for and view summaries of Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files.

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