SEARCH
ENGINES & DATABASES
symbol represents a site we find particularly useful.
AlltheWeb
(FAST) (http://www.alltheweb.com)
AlltheWeb currently covers approximately
3.1 billion web pages, hundreds of thousands of multimedia,
video, and software downloads, and real-time news from thousands
of sources. Advanced features encompass the ability to include
or exclude words or phrases from the query and to restrict
results by date. AlltheWeb will automatically try to improve
your results by rewriting your queries. The transformations
performed on your behalf include the addition of quotes
around common phrases that are detected from the AlltheWeb
phrase dictionary.
Alta
Vista (http://www.altavista.com)
We like to use Alta Vista to find information about a specific
term or name (such as a person or hard to find company).
Alta Vista often turns up a whole stack of relevant links
right at the top of the list. Its sources include government
and "public interest" sites. Be sure to place your specific
term in quotation marks.
Copernic
(http://www.copernic.com/desktop/products/agent/basic.html)
Copernic is a popular 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. Both free (Basic) and paid (Personal
and Professional) versions of the software are offered.
Dogpile
(http://www.dogpile.com)
Dogpile is our favorite metasearch 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.
Federal
Web Locator (http://www.infoctr.edu/fwl)
The Federal Web Locator is a service provided by the Center
for Information Law and Policy and is intended to be the
one stop shopping point for United States federal government
information on the World Wide Web. Also includes links to
multilateral organizations and non-governmental federally-related
sites.
FindArticles.com
(http://www.findarticles.com)
FindArticles.com is a vast archives of published articles
that can be searched and retrieved for free. Each of the
hundreds of thousands of articles dating back to 1998 from
more than 300 magazines and journals can be read in its
entirety and printed at no cost. The Business and Finance
section contains many industry publications. The News and
Society section offers articles from publications with editorial
viewpoints from right to left.
Google
(http://www.google.com)
Our favorite, Google excels at being both easy to use and
finding what you're looking for quickly.
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 four
of the web's best search engines: HotBot, Google, Lycos
& Ask Jeeves. 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.
The
Internet Public Library (http://www.ipl.org)
This site, developed and maintained by librarians, is a
great starting point and also offers a very nice Ready Reference
Collection http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/ref00.00.00/.
Produced by the School of Information, University of Michigan.
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.
Librarians'
Index to the Internet (http://lii.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.
LexisNexis
AlaCarte! (http://alacarte.lexisnexis.com/)
After registering for this service, you may freely search
more than 3.8 billion documents from over 20,000 sources
of news, public records, and government information, including
newspapers, magazines, and transcripts, company and industry
reports, deed records, liens, demographics, state and federal
legislation as far back as 1968. Advanced search page allows
searching for articles about an individual or company, to
select a range of dates, or to narrow your search results.
Purchasing the document for $3 gives you access for 90 days.
Try this service when its time to dig deeper than Google
and the services your local library offers.
MSN
Search (http://search.msn.com/)
Although Microsoft's search engine's index is smaller than
Google's, it conveniently offers access to Encarta, the
online encyclopedia in addition to links to cached pages,
consolidation of results from the same domain, a Google-like
Settings page, and automatic suggestion of alternate search
terms or spellings. Clicking the "Near Me" button
ranks the search results by their distance from the location
you specified on the Settings page. Clicking the Desktop
link invokes the MSN Desktop Search module of the MSN Desktop
Search (or prompts you to install it, if not present). Search
Builder allows refining a search without having to memorize
special prefixes. To limit the search to a particular domain,
for example, you simply click the "Site/Domain"
button, enter the domain, and click the "Add to search"
button.
Search
Engine Watchs Web Searching Tips (http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/)
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.
Vivisimo
(http://vivisimo.com)
This excellent meta-search engine 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
Vivisimo 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.
* 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, web site. You can search Yahoo if you can't
find what you want in subject indexes.
Updated Feb
2005. Please send Web site corrections to datacenter@datacenter.org.