Although the idea of "search
engines" could seem a narrow focus, this week's resources should convey the
message that a wide array of ways to search the Internet exist. The issue
becomes the choice of search engines (tools) to use to glean useful
materials with a minimal amount of sifting through the "wrong" sites.
Yahoo, Excite, and AltaVista rank among the favorites but there are many others. Since last week's assignments included subscriptions to listserves including the Tourbus, I want to share some sites from this list related to the topic of search engines.
The differences between search engines is the way they search! They utilize vocabularies and keywords and have a search pattern that yeilds different results. The engines also display their findings in different ways that may be more useful to you than others.
There are many, many sites to explore. First, I recommend
which is a site that explains how the search engines search with great examples of the use of keywords also known as "search.syntax." This site is a great orientation to several search engines. Also try a search at "Inference Find." This site searches intuitively and oftentimes finds "just" the right site you are seeking:
Website Finders: http://www.tourbus.com/archive/tb120997.txt
Northern Light... and a list of
the "Magnificent Seven" of search engines:
http://www.tourbus.com/archive/tb111397.txt
AltaVista Advanced Search Techniques: http://www.tourbus.com/archive/tb110497.txt
Metafind: http://www.tourbus.com/archive/tb091197.txt
Dogpile: http://www.tourbus.com/archive/tb072497.txt
The final resource for this week is my search engine metasite. A
"metasite" is a site listing many, many links to other sites. It can
be considered a major resource. As with any site, some
links may be "not found" or "Error 404 not found" or "This site has moved
to...."
http://www.fcae.nova.edu/~burmeist/search.html
The bonus here is the list of libraries on the Internet. We will return to those next week so please try to remain focused on the search engines. BTW, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Yahooligans is a search engine designed for young Internet searchers.