J.D.'s Search Engine Page

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J.D.'s Search Engine Page
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Widely Considered 'The Best'
(Also For Obscure Information):
http://www.google.com
http://www.teoma.com/

(Meta Search)
Lots of search engines at once
http://www.dogpile.com

GlimmerMann's Search Tool Page

Jack's Audio Source Search
Jack's Images Search

http://www.zipmax.com/

A 12 Engine Meta Search
http://www.lukol.com/

A 12 Engine Meta Search
http://www.sherlockhound.com/cgi-bin/quicksearch.pl
Main Page
http://www.planetsearch.com/

http://www.FindWhat.com/

http://www.MSN.com/

http://www.centerfind.com/

http://www.clickheretofind.com/

http://www.altavista.com

http://www.LookSmart.com/

http://www.Bay9.com/

http://www.Snap.com/
Now: NBCi.com/

http://www.Go.com/

http://www.beaucoup.com

http://www.GoTo.com
(For products and services)

http://www.excite.com

http://www.hotbot.com

http://www.infoseek.com

http://www.langenberg.com/

http://www.lycos.com

http://www.northernlight.com

http://www.webcrawler.com

http://www.webinfosearch.com/

http://www.yahoo.com

http://www.DejaNews.com/
Search For A Discussion Group

Searching on the internet may be somewhat complicated, long and frustrating. There are basic skills required to successfully navigate searches of the 'web'.

There are two main vehicles for searching on the Web--directories and search engines. Some seach engines employ directories, and some directories use search engines.

Directories are services that use people power to scour the Web for sites, then build a categorized database (file cabinet), for users to search. 'Yahoo' is one such service. Think of it as going to a library, where every book has been selected by a librarian. Just as libraries have a relatively small portion of all the books ever published, directories have just a segment of the Web sites out there.

Search engines are services that scan the Web in various ways for Web pages. These 'scans', or 'crawls', are done by a 'bot' (a type of computer program), that searches the Web and sends the information back to the search engine's database. 'Hotbot' is an example of a search engine. Most search engines have about one third of all the sites on the Web in their database at any one given time; some have more, some have less. There are also hybrid search engines, such as 'Infoseek', that combine both staff-reviewed sites with search engine results.

Another way to search is to use a 'metasearch' engine. This is a service that sends your search out to several search engines at the same time. One of these 'meta' search engines is 'Dogpile'. This approach is helpful if you are trying to narrow a broad topic down to something specific, but may not work well for very advanced single topic searches. For example, if you are looking for sources of information on a broad topic such as 'gardening', a metasearch would be a good tool. However, you may want to go another route if you are looking for a narrow topic, such as 'growing African violets'.

So how do you know which service to use? Think about search engines the way you think about shoes. You need to try on different shoes to find the ones that fit you best; and just as you wear different shoes, depending on what you are doing, you will find different search engines will fit better for different searches.

As a suggestion, try 'Yahoo' for broad topic searches, such as travel, and 'AltaVista' for a more specific search, such as the latest research on diabetes. 'AltaVista' 'crawls' a larger portion of the Web and has a bigger database to search.

Don't be afraid to try other sources also, such as personal sites with links.

The next step in constructing a search, (also called a query-which gives you relevant lists of sites), is to be as specific as possible. Learn a little 'search engine math' to greatly increase the return of results that are relevant to the search. Very often, searches result in links that have almost no bearing on what you are searching for. You can use the '+' symbol in front of any word in your search that you insist will be in the results. Use the '-' symbol for any words of the search that you do not want to show up in the result. Use quotation marks around a series of words or phrase that you want the exact phrase to be in the results.

For example; if you want only information on camping with your RV in northern California, you could try this query:

camping"northern California"+RV-tent

Most of the services have 'Help' pages that explain the way they work, and how to make a search more successful......For further research on this try:

http://www.monash.com/spidap.html

OR;

http://www.searchenginewatch.com

Good Luck on your search.....

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