Key Search Engines
for more information about Google click here | |
for more information about Yahoo click here | |
for more information about Ask Jeeves click here | |
for more information about AllTheWeb.com click here | |
for more information about HotBot click here | |
for more information about Teoma click here | |
for more information about AltaVista click here | |
for more information about Gigablast click here | |
for more information about LookSmart click here | |
for more information about Lycos click here | |
for more information about MSN Search click here | |
for more information about Netscape Search click here |
Google
Google has a well-deserved reputation as the top choice for those searching the web. The crawler-based service provides both comprehensive coverage of the web along with great relevancy. It's highly recommended as a first stop in your hunt for whatever you are looking for.
Google provides the option to find more than web pages, however. Using the top of the search box on the Google home page, you can easily seek out images from across the web, discussions that are taking place on Usenet newsgroups, locate news information or perform product searching. Using the 'More' link provides access to human-compiled information.
Google is also known for the wide range of features it offers, such as cached links that let you ‘resurrect’ dead pages or see older versions of recently changed ones. It offers excellent spell checking, easy access to dictionary definitions, integration of stock quotes, street maps, telephone numbers and more. See Google's help page for an entire rundown on some of these features. The Google Toolbar has also won a popular following for the easy access it provides to Google and its features directly from the Internet Explorer browser.
Google was originally a Stanford University project by students Larry Page and Sergey Brin called BackRub. By 1998, the name had been changed to Google, and the project jumped off campus and became the private company Google. It remains privately held today.
Google has a well-deserved reputation as the top choice for those searching the web. The crawler-based service provides both comprehensive coverage of the web along with great relevancy. It's highly recommended as a first stop in your hunt for whatever you are looking for.
Google provides the option to find more than web pages, however. Using the top of the search box on the Google home page, you can easily seek out images from across the web, discussions that are taking place on Usenet newsgroups, locate news information or perform product searching. Using the 'More' link provides access to human-compiled information.
Google is also known for the wide range of features it offers, such as cached links that let you ‘resurrect’ dead pages or see older versions of recently changed ones. It offers excellent spell checking, easy access to dictionary definitions, integration of stock quotes, street maps, telephone numbers and more. See Google's help page for an entire rundown on some of these features. The Google Toolbar has also won a popular following for the easy access it provides to Google and its features directly from the Internet Explorer browser.
Google was originally a Stanford University project by students Larry Page and Sergey Brin called BackRub. By 1998, the name had been changed to Google, and the project jumped off campus and became the private company Google. It remains privately held today.
Yahoo Launched in 1994, Yahoo is the web's oldest ‘directory’, a place where human editors organize web sites into categories. However, in October 2002, Yahoo made a giant shift to crawler-based listings for its main results. These came from Google until February 2004. Now, Yahoo uses its own search technology.
In addition to excellent search results, you can use tabs above the search box on the Yahoo home page to seek images, Yellow Page listings or use Yahoo's excellent shopping search engine. Or visit the Yahoo Search home page, where even more specialized search options are offered.
The Yahoo Directory still survives. You'll notice ‘category’ links below some of the sites lists in response to a keyword search. When offered, these will take you to a list of web sites that have been reviewed and approved by a human editor.
It's also possible to do a pure search of just the human-compiled Yahoo Directory, which is how the old or ‘classic’ Yahoo used to work. To do this, search from the Yahoo Directory home page, as opposed to the regular Yahoo.com home page. Then you'll get both directory category links (‘Related Directory Categories’) and ‘Directory Results,’ which are the top web site matches drawn from all categories of the Yahoo Directory.
Ask Jeeves Ask Jeeves initially gained fame in 1998 and 1999 as being the ‘natural language’ search engine that let you search by asking questions and responded with what seemed to be the right answer to everything.
In reality, technology wasn't what made Ask Jeeves perform so well. Behind the scenes, the company at one point had about 100 editors who monitored search logs. They then went out onto the web and located what seemed to be the best sites to match the most popular queries. Today, Ask Jeeves depends on crawler-based technology to provide results to its users.
Ask Jeeves is doing innovative things with invisible tabs and with what it calls Smart Search. The future of search is likely to be this much smarter approach to delivering more than just web pages, and makes Ask Jeeves a well-worth a visit by anyone looking for information.
AllTheWeb.com
Powered by Yahoo, you may find AllTheWeb a lighter, more customizable and pleasant ‘pure search’ experience than you get at Yahoo itself. The focus is on web search, but news, picture, video, MP3 and FTP search are also offered.
AllTheWeb.com was previously owned by a company called FAST and used as a showcase for that company's web search technology. That's why you sometimes may sometimes hear AllTheWeb.com also referred to as FAST or FAST Search. However, the search engine was purchased by search provider Overture in 2003, then later become Yahoo's property when Yahoo bought Overture. It no longer has a connection with FAST.
HotBot HotBot provides easy access to the web's three major crawler-based search engines: Yahoo, Google and Teoma. Unlike a meta search engine, it cannot blend the results from all of these crawlers together. Nevertheless, it's a fast, easy way to get different web search ‘opinions’ in one place.
Teoma
Teoma is a crawler-based search engine owned by Ask Jeeves. It has a smaller index of the web than its rival crawler-competitors Google and Yahoo. However, being large doesn't make much of a difference when it comes to popular queries, and Teoma's won praise for its relevancy since it appeared in 2000. Some people also like its ‘Refine’ feature, which offers suggested topics to explore after you do a search. The ‘Resources’ section of results is also unique, pointing users to page that specifically serve as link resources about various topics.
AltaVista AltaVista opened in December 1995 and for several years was the ‘Google’ of its day, in terms of providing relevant results and having a loyal group of users that loved the service.
Sadly, an attempt to turn AltaVista into a portal site in 1998 saw the company lose track of the importance of search. Over time, relevancy dropped, as did the freshness of AltaVista's listings and the crawler's coverage of the web.
Today, AltaVista is once again focused on search. Results come from Yahoo, and tabs above the search box let you go beyond web search to find images, MP3/Audio, Video, human category listings and news results. If you want a lighter-feel than Yahoo but to still have Yahoo's results, AltaVista is worth considering.
Gigablast
Compared to Google, Yahoo or even Teoma, Gigablast has a tiny index of the web. However, the service is constatly gaining new and interesting features. Give it a whirl if you want to try something experimental yet dependable.
LookSmart LookSmart is primarily a human-compiled directory of web sites gathering its listings from commercial sites which pay to be listed in its commercial categories and by having volunteer editors catalogue sites into non-commercial categories for free. The real gem at LookSmart can be found via its Articles tab which provides access to content from thousands of periodicals.
Lycos
Lycos is one of the oldest search engines on the web having been launched in 1994. It ceased crawling the web for its own listings in April 1999 and now provides access to human-powered results from LookSmart for popular queries and crawler-based results from Yahoo for others.
Lycos’ Fast Forward lets you see search results in one side of your screen and the actual pages listed in another. Relevant categories of human-compiled information from the Open Directory appear at the bottom of the search results page.
MSN Search MSN Search was previously powered by LookSmart results and gained top marks for having its own team of editors that monitored the most popular searches being performed to hand-pick sites believed to be the most relevant. The system worked well.
Today, MSN Search provides access to Yahoo listings but not as much functionality in terms of other types of searches that you'll find at Yahoo itself. MSN is developing its own crawler-based technology and has introduced other changes which have revitalised the service.
Netscape Search Owned by AOL Time Warner, Netscape Search uses Google for its main listings, just as does AOL's other major search site, AOL Search. So why use Netscape Search rather than Google? Unlike with AOL Search, there's no compelling reason to consider it. The main difference between Netscape Search and Google is that Netscape Search will list some of Netscape's own content at the top of its results. Netscape also has a completely different look and feel than Google. If you like either of these reasons, then try Netscape Search. Otherwise, you're probably better off just searching at Google.
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