Garry Garrett's Homepage

Internet Seach Tools...

These are various web sites that you can go to in order to search for the information that you want on the web. They are commonly called "Search Engines". If you aren't quite sure how to search, consult my table of Common Search Syntax below. I've tried to update some of the search engines that have merged with other search engines. Most of the engines these days have a classic search function, but also have "catagory" pages.

Web Search Engines

• Yahoo - one of the original search engines. (They also have a nice page on other seach engines that you can use). Still my personal favorite. They bought out Alta Vista and their Babel Fish translation engine, now called Babelfish.Yahoo.Com
• Google - a search engine that (to a limited extent) caches web pages, so even if a page is no longer around, you may be able to find it in Google's cache. They now own iwon.com - their gimic is they give away random cash prizes to people who use them to search. I'm sure they would be a better search engine of they spent that cash on researching what's out there on the web.
• About.com - I'm not sure how to classify them, but search engine is probably close enough.
• Excite! which now owns the WebCrawler search engine too.
• Lycos which has merged with another search engine Hotbot
• Galaxy
• Nerdworld - a little more heavy on computer topics.
• Crosswalk runs a Search Engine filtered for unsavory content.
• Mondsoft (formerly "SearchButton").
• Northern Light
• PicSearch - I search engine geared towards finding pictures (photos, clip-art, etc.)

Meta Search Engines

These are search engines of search engines. They will search other search engines for you.

• C|Net's search.com - a metasearch site, allows to to submit quiries to some of the others on this list (e.g. submit a query to Yahoo and AltaVista...)
• Dogpile - searches web, usenet, ftp, etc.

"Expert" sites

These are sites that allow you to post questions, which are intern answered by "experts" (sometimes real live people with expertise, sometimes self appointed "know it alls"). Some of the "experts" get paid, others are in it for the "egaboo" (ego boost).

• All Experts (now owns Expert Central too)
• Ask Me
• Epinions
• Experts Exchange (just computer stuff).

Misc. Search Tools

These are not web search engines, but are related.

• Find a random web page with ... URoulette. Not a serach engine really, but if you are surfing you can sometimes find some interesting pages from the routlette wheel. This used to be a whole lot more fun before the web became so commericalized. Enter at your own risk, the random page you are swept away to may not be suitable for all audiances.
• Ask (formerly "Ask Jeeves") allows you to ask questions (i.e. type them in English) and it will pick through your question attempting to find related web sites. It does a good job of picking through your question for the key words, but the list of hits that it brings back is rather small compared to traditional search engines.
• Wolfram Alpha not only does natrual language searches, but calculates the results and give you "answers" to your questions, also in natural language.
• START project another natrual language question/answer system.
• Yahoo!Answers (should have been named Yahoo!Guesses - so many of the people answering questions are so incredibly clueless).
• Google Groups (formerly Dejanews) Usenet News archives
• ShareWare.com A search engine for FTP sites.
• Liszt is a search engine for listservs.