MS. REIMCHE'S GUIDE TO
SEARCHING ON THE INTERNET
Using Search Engines
Google - 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.
All the Web - An excellent crawler-based search engine, All The Web provides both comprehensive coverage of the web and outstanding relevancy. If you tried Google and didn't find it, All The Web should probably be next on your list.
Yahoo - 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 using Google's crawler-based listings for its main results.
If Yahoo is now powered by Google, then why bother using it? For one thing, you might find that the way Yahoo "enhances" Google's listings with information from its own directory may make search results more readable.
This information was taken from Major Search Engines and Directories - An article comparing the features of the most popular search engines.
Using Meta-search Engines
In a meta-search engine, you submit keywords in its search box, and it transmits your search simultaneously to several individual search engines and their databases of web pages. Within a few seconds, you get back results from all the search engines queried
Using Web Portals
Web Portals are sites on the World Wide Web that you can use to identify other useful Web sites in a particular subject area.
A guide to portals on Education
Portals to the World from the Library of Congress - info on countries
AardvarkSport - a portal to sports web sites
The Government of Canada is creating Web portals that consolidate information and services from all levels of government either by subject or audience.
Kidsclick - web search for kids
The History Net and History Wiz are some History portals
A Science Portal from University of South Carolina Libraries
LII - Librarians' index to the Internet
Using The Invisible Web
The "Invisible Web" is information that you cannot retrieve using a general search engine or directory. For a detailed explanation read this article.
It is mostly made up of searchable databases. One way to access it is to add the word "database" to a subject search.
Links to the invisible web:
Try the Search Strategy Tool at Noodle Tools
Using Paid databases
