Search Tools
Search engines use ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’ to go out and retrieve individual Web pages or documents, either because they’ve found them themselves, or because the Web site has asked to be listed. Search engines tend to “index” (record by word) all of the terms on a given Web document. Or they may index all of the terms within the first few sentences, the Web site title, or the document’s metatags. Remember when you are using a search engine you are not searching the Internet “live”, as it exists at this very moment. Rather, you are searching a fixed database that has been compiled some time previous to your search.
All search engines will produce different results. Factors that influence results include the size of the database, the frequency of updating, and the search capabilities. Search engines also differ in their search speed, the design of the search interface, the way in which they display results, and the amount of help they offer.
If you would like assistance in choosing a search tool select ‘ Choose the Best Search for Your Purpose ‘.
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| Kngine is Web 3.0 Search Engine (i.e. revolutionary Semantic Search Engine and Question Answer Engine) which is designed to provide customized meaningful search results, such as: Semantic Information about the keyword/concepts, Answers the user’s questions, List things, Discover the relations between the keywords/concepts, and links the different kind of related information together such as: Movies, Subtitles, Photos, Prices at sale stores, Users reviews, and Influenced stories. | SweetSearch helps you find outstanding information, faster. It enables you to determine the most relevant results from a list of credible resources, and makes it much easier for you to find primary sources.They have excluded not only the spam sites that are hard to spot, but also the marginal sites that read well and authoritatively, but lack academic or journalistic rigor. As importantly, the very best Web sites that appear on the first page of SweetSearch results are often buried on other search engines |
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| Infotopia is an academic search engine accessing only trusted websites previously selected by librarians and teachers. Infotopia is recommended for students and teachers. Infotopia was created by, and is maintianed by, Dr. Michael Bell, former chair, Texas association of school librarians. | blekko is a better way to search the web by using slashtags. slashtags search only the sites you want and cut out the spam sites. use friends, experts, community or your own slashtags to slash in what you want and slash out what you don’t. |
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| DuckDuckGo allows you to find what you want on the Internet without gving up your privacy. When you are looking for instant answers, less spam, and less clutter this search engine provides you with useful information. | Answers.com is a free, ad-supported, reference search service, accessing some of the better free reference sources on the Web. Answers.com displays quick, snapshot answers with concise, reliable information. This is a good choice for you if you want direct answers to search queries without requiring you to click on any further Web links. |
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| Deeper web, a new search engine extension, introduces Google users with innovative search boosting technologies. Employing Tag-Cloud techniques to help users navigate through search results more efficiently and Topic-Mapping Technologies for fast results identification. |
iSEEK™ Education is a targeted search engine that compiles hundreds of thousands of authoritative resources from university, government, and established noncommercial providers. It provides time-saving intelligent search and a personal Web-based library to help you locate the most relevant results immediately and find them quickly later.
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| Twurdy has been created to provide people with access to search results that suit their own readability level. The name “Twurdy” comes from a play on words with the question “Too Wordy?”. Twurdy uses text analysis software to “read” each page before it is displayed in the results. Then Twurdy gives each page a readability level. Twurdy then shows the readability level of the page along with a color coded system to help you determine how easy the page will be to understand. | |
A subject directory is a catalog of sites collected and organized by humans. Typically, they start with a few main categories and then branch out into subcategories, topics, and subtopics. Directories are a good place to start when you don’t have a specific idea of what you need.
Because directories cover only a small fraction of the pages available on the Web, they are most effective for finding general information on popular or scholarly subjects. If you are looking for something specific, use a search engine.
If you need Canadian information these are excellent choices to search Canadian databases.
A meta-search tool utilizes a number of search engines in parallel. You use keywords to conduct your search employing commonly used operators or plain language. Hits are listed either by search engine employed or by integrating the results into a single listing.
Semantic Search Tools
The True Knowledge answer engine is a technology capable of answering questions put to it on any topic
Hakia’s semantic technology provides a new search experience that is focused on quality, not popularity. hakia’s quality search results satisfy three criteria simultaneously: They (1) come from credible Web sites recommended by librarians, (2) represent the most recent information available, and (3) remain absolutely relevant to the query
Image Search Engines
Image search engines and directories help you find artwork, photographs, and multimedia on the Web. Many image search engines display artwork and photographs as thumbnail pictures.
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| Google provides a keyword based image search with over 150 million images held in their database. Google analyses the text on the page adjacent to the image, the image caption and dozens of other factors to determine the image content. | Wikimedia Commons is a database of 11,592,282 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute. |
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| Copyright-Friendly and Copyleft Images and Sound (Mostly!)for Use in Media Projects and Web Pages, Blogs, Wikis, etc. | Yahoo Image Search helps you find an image for school assignments. use the advanced search to narrow your search to find exactly the right photograph. |
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| Search Engine Colossus has organized search engines by country and by categories. This is a well presented and very comprehensive list of search engines, directories and subject portals. | |
If you are interested in learning more about search engine features and performance select ‘ Search Engine Watch ‘.


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