Web

Evaluating Web-based Information

• A Student's Guide to WWW Research: Web Searching, Web Page Evaluation, & Research Strategies
• Thinking Critically About Web Sources
• Evalulating Web Sources for Relevance
• The Authority of Web Sites
• Evaluating Web Sources for Accuracy

Search Engine Guides and Tutorials

• The Spider's Apprentice
• Search Engine Watch
• Finding Information on the Internet — A useful tutorial from University of California, Berkeley Library
• Understanding and Comparing Search Engines — links to several useful articles, dicussions and reviews of avaliable search engine

Meta Search Engines

Guide to Meta-Search Engines
What are Meta-Search Engines? When to use and not use them?

• AlltheWeb — Has a huge index - 2.1 billion or so and 30% of the index refreshed every 9 - 12 days, the rest monthly.
• Ask Jeeves--Questions help narrow search. Simultaneously searches other sites. Interprets natural language.
• Dogpile — Metasearch through 13 Web engines. Sorts by results on search engine that found the results.
• Galaxy — "The professional's guide to a world of information."
• InfoNetWare — is a demonstration of RealTerm technology applied to Internet search. It submits queries to a traditional Internet search engine and then sorts the results into topics.
• ixquick — A powerful metasearch engine.
• Mamma— Quality of returns is average—sometimes right on, other times full of excess sites. Doesn’t delete duplicate returns and repeats often.
• Metacrawler — Simultaneously searches Yahoo,  Excite and others.  Limited search options.
• 1Blink — ZDNet rates this one of the top meta-search sites on the Web.
• Query Server — It queries 10 search engines and the results are combined and categorized according to the options you choose.
• Teoma— uses link analysis like Google, but goes further by sorting results into folders.
• Vivisimo— automatically clusters search results into categories, then palces them into an intuitive folders-style interface with hierarchical categories for drill-down capability. Very Useful!
• Walhello— Doesn't look like much, but the results are highly relevant!
• Wisenut— uses link analysis like Google, but goes further by sorting results into folders.Claims to have indexed 1.5 billion pages

Search Engines and Indexes

• Altavista — recognizes capitalization, names and titles and searches both the WWW and Usenet.
• Google — Sorts hits by frequency link.Clean interface, no ad clutter. Top search engine in 2003
• Hotbot — Wired magazine's search site. Up-to-date index. Precise user queries possible.
• LookSmart — Searches periodicals, maps, transcripts, pictures. Advertises exploring 20,000 subject
• Search.com
• Webcrawler — Excels in ease of use and implements some very nice proximity search features.
• Yahoo — Categorizes Web content of over 1 million sites. Keyword and advanced searches.