Harry Ainlay High School

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 ‘.

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
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.
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.
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.
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.

Subject Directories

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 are looking for a scholarly resource, this is a great place to start. The INFOMINE project at the University of California, Riverside categorizes resources by subjects, titles, and keywords.	A good choice for popular or general information, Yahoo can be searched directly or browsed by category. Be careful much of the content is dated and it has a significant commercial emphasis.
A large collection selected by staff at the University of Michigan. You can browse or search this collection of quality sites. Check out the reference section.	A hierarchical subject index with particular strengths in commercial and recreational sites. The index covers only sites submitted to Galaxy.
An excellent choice to begin any exploration of a new subject area.The About.com network includes over 700 highly specialized areas, each overseen by an expert guide. Search results include original essays by the guide, which offer subject context, as well as picks for the best directories and links .The “homework help” section may help you with research assignments.	The Open Directory is a significant resource collection compiled by thousands of volunteer editors and promising extensive expansion. One of the larger directory databases but quality sometimes is inconsistent.
This database is a searchable, annotated subject directory of more than 9,000 Internet resources selected and evaluated by librarians for their usefulness to users of public libraries. It is used by both librarians and the general public as a reliable and efficient guide to Internet resources.	A Yahoo for kids, this directory contains hand-picked sites for student information needs.
Britannica.com is a directory with a more scholarly focus than the other directories, featuring academic resources. By using our paid subscription you eliminate the advertising. See the library staff for passwords.

Canadian Search Engines

If you need Canadian information these are excellent choices to search Canadian databases.

This site features options to search the entire web, to search pages from Canada only, and the ability to quickly customize Google’s interface and search language to French.	This directory and search engine permits you to search Canadian listings and all of Yahoo!
The English-Canadian edition of Looksmart.
Canada.com is Canada’s leading general news and information destination online. canada.com integrates credible Canadian content and perspectives together with community-building tools and devices at the country’s most recognizable web address.	This engine provides access to a crawler-compiled index of millions of Canadian-specific web pages, as well as the ability to search against AltaVista’s worldwide crawler-based index. This service is provided by Telus.
A Canadian meta-search engine.

Metacrawlers

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.

This metacrawler queries multiple websites simultaneously and will deliver a combined results page of the best sites from each search engine. You are able to submit queries to 9 search engines and subject directories.	Searches on about 16 engines showing the results of the pay per click search engines first. Dogpile supports full Boolean logic and phrase searching.
This engine allows you to choose “Focus” words (top left) to add broader, narrower or similar words to your search terms.	Vivismo automatically clusters your results in an easy to understand fashion. You can scroll through these on the main part of the page or click on the handy folders on the left hand side of the page. Either way this additional organization makes it easier to navigate the search results and find what you are looking for more quickly.
Kartoo is a new metasearch tool developed in France by Web developers Laurent and Nicolas Baleydier. Unlike a typical search engine, Kartoo gathers hits from other search tools and then maps out the subtopics it finds. For example, if you’re looking for a map of the War of 1812 type “map” War of 1812 into the search box, you’ll pull up a diagram that shows the relationships between the many subtopics related to your search. Give this search tool a test drive on your next search.	Yippy is a metasearch engine: it queries multiple search engines and combines the results to be displayed as a group, or cloud, on one screen.
Beaucoup uses over 2000 search engines and organizes sites into a number of different categories.	Searching 14 engines, this search engine is fast, comprehensive and ranks findings by relevance. Results are ranked by relevancy and includes information about which search engine it came from. Currently one of the few meta search tools that supports regular searches, natural language searches, and advanced boolean searches, and knows which engines can handle which types of searches.
Turbo 10 is a metasearch engine which allows you to search the deep net.

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.

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.
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.

Other Search Tools

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 ‘.