« The Top Search Engines »

Introduction

This page gives links and background information to the top half dozen or so household name search engines.

This looks interesting! : Google'World
To find easily and quickly any type of information about the world according to Google.


NOTE TO SELF:
Cross reference the search engine sub-directory portal within the reference and education (etc) pages of my site...

• AllTheWeb ~ FTP / Video / Images ...
  
  
• AOL
  
  
• BUBL Information Service
  
  
• Google includes RPGS, Libraries, Biology...
  
  
• Lycos A2Z
  
  
• Netscape: Netsearch
  
  
• MSN
  
  
• ...
  
  

Search Engines: The big six

Figures are from circa 2002 when I wrote this page. When I remember and have time I'll update them.

• Altavista
  350 million pages indexed*
  Good for obscure facts and figues (Circa Fall 2002). Plus is offers full Boolean and case-sensitive searching.
  
  
• Google
  1.2 billion web pages indexed - (Nov 2002)*
  4.3 billion web pages indexed - (Sept 2004)
  Covers more web-site than anyone else. Also, it's ranking methods are based on links. The more links point to you, the higher your ranking. PDF files are included in the search results.
  
  
• Hotbot
  500 million pages indexed*
  Optimised to search for multimedia files and to locate website geographically
  
  
• Lycos
  575 million web pages indexed*
  Also good for multimedia searches.
  Good for finding phrases too. "To be or not to be" on some other engines can be treated as ("To be" OR NOT "to be"), which is like telling it to search for "To be", but to ignore anythin saying "To be" !
  
  
• Northern Lights
  330 million web pages indexed*
  Lets you search both the Web and a "special collection" database of articles, transcripts and documents not otherwise readily available on the net.
  Also gets an extra vote from myseld as it had indexed all my site too!
  
  
• Yahoo!
  1.2 billion web pages indexed*
  Yahoo! has the best organised web directory, making it an excellent choice for exploring my subject.
  
  

*For updates and other search engine features visit Truly Useful

General Purpose search engine

• AOL Search
  
  
• Excite
  
  
• Google Groups - Searches designed and optimised for newsgroup searchs (Used to be Deja)
  
  
• Magellan (Now webcrawler, I think)
  
  
• MSN Search
  
  
• Netscape Search
  
  
• Webcrawler