• symbol represents a site we find particularly useful.

Bing (http://www.bing.com)
Known previously as Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search, Bing has been billed as a “decision machine” that “finds and organizes the answers your needs so you can make a faster, more informed decisions.”  Bing operates much like Live Search did, with the most significant change affecting Encarta and search results.  As a result, Encarta has been discontinued and search results are now organized into categories.

• Copernic (http://www.copernic.com/en/products/agent/index.html)
Copernic is a popular free meta search software that runs on your computer desktop, either as a standalone application or within your browser.  It provides all the benefits of a good meta search engine with the additional features of allowing search result sorting, link verification, saving searches and more.

Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com)
Dogpile is our favorite meta search engine, a search engine that runs your search on multiple search engines all in one shot.  It’s a good tool to use if you come up empty on individual search engines.  Dogpile, like many search engines, also offers Usenet (Internet discussion groups) searching.  Newscrawler option searches newspapers, and corporate searching is available through its Business Wires setting.  Limitation: search techniques that work on one search engine will not necessarily work well on Dogpile, due to variances between the search engines.

• Google (http://www.google.com)
Our favorite, Google excels at being both easy to use and finding what you’re looking for quickly. Check out our Tips for Online Research to make the most out of your Google searches.

• Google News (http://www.news.google.com)
Search and browse 4,000 continuously updated news sources linking directly to the source publication.  Retrospective searches are limited by each publication’s policy regarding free access, fee access, and maintaining active links to articles.  For articles fed directly to your email, create Google News Alerts to monitor developing news stories, or keep current on an event, personality, company or industry. (http://www.google.com/newsalerts).

• Google Groups (http://groups.google.com)
Google has acquired and successfully integrated the full Deja.com archive into the Google Groups service.  When you search or browse within Google Groups, you now access Usenet posts dating back to 1995.  This archive is the largest such storehouse of postings on the web and contains more than 650 million messages, over a terabyte of human conversation, much of which has been unavailable for years. Usenet newsgroups are international public discussion forums on a huge range of subjects; deja.com archives approximately 45,000 newsgroups going back to March 1995.  Particularly useful for tracking down movement information that may not show up on the Web. Searching the SUBJECT field (Power Search) is recommended. Caution: Usenet includes a full range of information, ideas, and opinion.  Be sure to check your sources before counting on the reliability of the information.

HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com)
HotBot has been redesigned for the power searcher, delivering speed, control, and a unified interface to three of the web’s best search engines: Yahoo, MSN, & LyGO.com. You select which catalog you want to search with radio buttons above the search form.  After entering your search terms and seeing results from your selected engine, you can easily view the results from the others just by clicking their respective radio buttons.

KnowX (http://www.knowx.com)
Search public records on businesses or people.  Search fees range from free to $1.50 per database.  Charges for documents range from $1 – $7.

INFOMINE (http://infomine.ucr.edu/)
INFOMINE is a virtual library of Internet resources relevant containting databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other types of information. Librarians from the University of California, Wake Forest University, California State University, the University of Detroit – Mercy, and other universities and colleges have contributed to building INFOMINE. The web site is designed to work with any Web browser that has the ability to display HTML and forms. Some JavaScript is used, but it is not necessary.

Librarians’ Index to the Internet (http://ipl.org)
The Librarians’ Index to the Internet is a searchable, annotated subject directory of more than 5,700 Internet resources selected and evaluated by librarians for their usefulness to users of public libraries.  It’s meant to be used by both librarians and non-librarians as a reliable and efficient guide to described and evaluated Internet resources.

NoodleQuest (http://www.noodletools.com/noodlequest/)
With hundreds of search engines available, its often difficult to know which one to use! NoodleQuest helps you get started down the right path. Just answer a few questions about your research topic and NoodleQuest will reveal some of the best search strategies you can use, and even explain why! In addition the NoodleTools website is a student research service (you have to pay if you aren’t at a university that provides the service for its students) that helps you correctly cite sources in MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turabian citation styles. Use NoodleTools throughout a research project to track your sources, take notes, create outlines, collaborate with classmates, and format and print your bibliography.

Public Health and Social Justice (http://phsj.org/)
This website contains articles, slide shows, syllabi, and other documents relevant to topics in public health and social justice. References for most of the information contained in the slide shows can be found in the accompanying articles. Presentations are updated every 6-12 months (note that link addresses have “2007? in them….this is because they were originally created then, and it does not designate when the most recent update occurred). The site is aimed at students, educators, and the general public. It addresses the social, economic, environmental, human rights, and cultural contributors to health and illness. Some of the content focuses on the medical humanities and the history of medicine. All slide shows are open-access. Feel free to use information from the articles and slide shows, indeed even the slides themselves, with appropriate citation. Hopefully this information can be disseminated widely, influencing current and future generations of health professionals and others concerned about creating a more just and peaceful world.

Search Engine Watch’s Web Searching Tips (http://searchenginewatch.com/page/tips)
This section of Search Engine Watch provides tips on using search engines better, including a Search Features Chart; a one page summary of major search commands and operators at various search engines, plus a comparison of special search features.

Topix (http://www.topix.net/)
Topix.net provides users the ability to quickly and easily find targeted news on the Internet by continually monitoring breaking news from over 3,000 sources creating topically driven, specific news web pages and populating each of those pages with only news about that particular topic.  Whether you are interested in finding all the news about your community, a company, industry, or issue, Topix.net provides an easy way to find the targeted news that is relevant to you.

* Wayback Machine (http://www.archive.org/web/web.php)
Browse through 30 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago.  The Wayback Machine allows people to access and use archived versions of stored websites; an essential tool for exploring back issues of e-newsletters, and other documents presented on a company organization or personal website.  Type in an URL, select a date, and then begin surfing on an archived version of the web.

Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com)
Extensive subject index, a good starting point if you are looking for a specific company, government agency, or organization web site.  Company information includes a profile, news, stock information, officers, number of employees, contact information, and website.  You can search Yahoo (http://dir.yahoo.com) if you can’t find what you want in subject indexes.

• Yippy (http://www.yippy.com/)
This excellent meta-search engine that queries many major search engines, conveniently clusters documents into subcategory folders and provides results in an easy-to-view format that nonetheless provides non-intrusive access to those who want its advanced features.  Options include opening results in a new window or “previewing” a page by having it appear embedded within the search results list.  Although Yippy now carries paid listings, when performing a default web search, it segregates these from the editorial results it gathers from other search engines and clearly labels them.

Updated August 2013.  Please send website corrections to datacenter[at]datacenter.org.