They are so useful, once you find the way to get what you want. The way you use keywords and the order of them can mean the difference between success and failure. The commonest failure is loads of links that all match your keywords, but just point to lots of shops, when what you really want is the technical info on the item.
| Name | link | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Hotbot | http://www.hotbot.com | This was the first search engine I ever really used. It still seems OK to me, though not as fast as some of the others. Owned by Lycos now (I think). |
| Ask Jeeves | http://www.ask.com | This one has been around for some time as well. It is still popular and still gives good results. |
| http://www.google.com | This is the current big daddy of search engines. Though rumblings abound that the searches are starting to be dominated by shops and adverts and that is making it less useful, unless your only interested in shopping. Don't forget with Google that you can change the ".com" for country specific domain endings (eg ".co.uk") to stay within your country search results. | |
| MSN | http://search.msn.com | Microsoft's search engine. They are taking steps to catch up with Google and may well prove to be better. Let's see. |
| Turbo10 | http://www.turbo10.com | This is a tool that specialises in search the "deep web", also known as the "invisible web". Thousands of dynamic pages that are never seen by a typical search engine. Particularly things from educational and government sources. |
| AltaVista | http://www.altavista.com | The old master of the search engines. This was toppled by Google, when it got too bloated with adverts, etc. Now it is back to a slim, efficient looking engine. Worth a try. |
| Teoma | http://www.teoma.com | This is the actual engine behind Ask Jeeves. It is efficient and works better than most. Well worth a look and maybe even a replacement for Google? |
| Ujiko | http://www.ujiko.com | This is a very different type of engine. It uses a flash front end that allows it to track what sites you usually look for and it can use this to improve efficiency of its searches. |
| Yahoo | http://www.yahoo.com | One of the big players. A great place to start looking around for info. Great for getting weather details, finance information, etc. |
| Name | link | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Blinkx | http://www.blinkx.com | |
| Copernic | http://www.copernic.com |
| Name | link | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Clusty | http://www.clusty.com | A cluster search engine. Possibly the face of things to come. Available as a toolbar for Firefox. |
| Grokker | http://www.grokker.com | A cluster search engine. Combines the results of your search from AltaVista, FAST, MSN, Teoma, WiseNut and Yahoo! (there is a Google plugin as well). |