General Search Engines
| Name | Strengths | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Simple and straightforward, Google often provides a good list of relevant hits to your search. It also indexes PDF documents, Word documents, and PostScript files, blogs, YouTube, its ever-growing database of full-text books, and on and on and on. | A good place to start your Internet search. Google is often highly rated by users. It is one of the largest indexers of the Web. | |
| Google Image Search | Easy and fast with excellent results. Clicking on an image shows the image and the page from which it came. | If you are looking for images this is a great site to use. |
| Google Scholar | Searches “open-to-the-free-web” scholarly literature (papers, theses, books, articles, etc.). Provides access to some documents that are not indexed by databases. | Often does not link to the full text of articles, or requires a fee to link to full text. Try the advanced search tips. |
| Blekko | The newest search engine on the block. Blekko has real humans curating its content, as seen in its categorizing search results by subject, thus differentiating it from other search engines. | The focus is on quality content. It claims, or at least aims, to eliminate spam and other low-content results. |
| DuckDuckGo | This search engine’s claim to fame is that it doesn’ttrackor “bubble” users. It’s a tool that respects privacy and makes sure you see all relevant results, not just the results it thinks you want to see. | Search results often contain “instant answers.” Agoodiesservice includes all sorts of special searches (calculations, conversions, dates, etc.) |
| Yahoo | Yahoo has become a portal site – a home base for news, e-mail, weather, and consumer advice – as well as a search tool. | Best of the old “directory” style search engines. Subject-listed entries are selected by people and arranged by category. It is a good place to start a search. |
| AltaVista | A huge index, like Google. Use the advanced search feature for best results. Good for searching various types of images. | AltaVista and Yahoo are owned by the same company, so you might lose track of where you are… |
| Bing | Microsoft’s addition to the list of search engines. | Search results are broken down into categories listed on the left side of the page for easier topical searches. |
Collections of Selected Websites
| Name | Strengths | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Sweet Search | SweetSearch is a custom search engine that searches just 35,000 expert-selected Web sites. | Very focused on the needs of students. First few hits bring together sources on a single subject. Each entry displays from 100-400 words of context around search terms. |
| ipl2 | Highest quality sites are compiled by public librarians. Good, reliable descriptions provided for sites. This website is a merger between the Internet Public Library (IPL) and the Librarians’ Internet Index (LII). | Helpful for web research when you want sites that are considered authoritative and reliable. |
| Open Directory Project | A human-edited directory of the Web which is constructed and maintained by a global community of volunteer editors. | No ranking or promotion of websites. Open Source inspired, volunteer managed initiative (so quality may vary). |
| The Internet Scout Project | This directory (housed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison) has sites selected by professional librarians, educators and content specialists. Sites are screened for timely, accurate information. | The quick search box is in the upper right hand corner. Be sure to explore advanced searching by clicking on the “Scout Report Archives” link. |
| News Trust | Featured quality news and opinions that are rated by members based on quality, not just popularity. Reviewers were vetted and rated too, before their reviews get top billing. | An archive to find “good journalism online.” Their goal was to increase news literacy and allow people to make well-informed decisions in our democracy. |
The lists in these tables are by no means exhaustive. They do represent a general consensus on what the helpful search tools are. If you are interested in finding out more about Internet search tools, check out the following links
- NoodleTools guide to search tools: Matches search tool to your information need. Doesn’t come any better than this!
- Search Engine Showdown: Gives ongoing analysis, statistics, reviews, and comparisons of the major search engines
- The ipl2 Web Searching Page
