Internet Search Engines
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As Randolph Hock says in his book, The Extreme Searcher's Guide to Web Search Engines, “the best way to really get to know the engines well is to use them.” However, everyone likes a little help, and so we have created charts of three types of search tools for the Web--general search engines, collections of selected websites, and meta-search engines. You can link to any of the cited search tools by clicking on them in the chart.

Name	Strengths	Comments
Google	Simple and straightforward, Google often provides a good list of relevant hits to your search. Indexes PDF documents, Word documents, and PostScript files, which other search engines don't touch.	A good place to start your Internet search. Google is often highly rated by users. It is one of the largest indexers of the Web.
Google Image Search	Easy and fast with excellent results. Clicking on an image shows the image and the page from which it came.	If you are looking for images this is a great site to use.
Google Scholar	Searches “open-to-the-free-web” scholarly literature (papers, theses, books, articles, etc.). Provides access to some documents that are not indexed by databases.	Often does not link to the full text of articles, or requires a fee to link to full text. Try the advanced search tips.
Ask.com	Provides useful current event information about topics before any commercial sites. Unlike Google, this site tells you when it is filtering information and gives you the choice to view filtered pages You can also use Ask.com to search for images.	In addition to results, Ask.com gives suggestions on how to narrow your search on the right sidebar. Click on to view a thumbnail image of a page before you go to it.
Yahoo	Entries are selected by people and arranged by subjects. It is a good place to start a search.	Best of the old “Directory” style search engines. It was the first directory on the Web.
AltaVista	A huge index, like Google. Use the advance search feature for best results. Good for searching various types of images.	(Advanced search is recommended but may be difficult for beginners.)
Bing	Microsoft's addition to the list of search engines.	Search results are broken down into categories listed on the left side of the page for easier topical searches.
Clusty (from Vivisimo)	Clusters search results into hierarchical categories. Also searches news, blogs, Wikipedia (encyclopedia built by readers), and “gossip” (from sources like National Enquirer!). Technically a meta-search engine.	Click on the “Customize” tab to add or subtract search tabs. Excellent source for focusing searches.
AllTheWeb (Used to be Fast Search)	Third largest search engine after Google and WiseNut. According to one report by SearchEngine Showdown, delivers the most unique hits of the major search engines. Very large and provides excellent rankings. Search for News, Images, MP3s, FTP files, and Videos.	If you like Google, try AllTheWeb. Like many of the others you can do more advanced searching.

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