Selected Internet Sites

Search Engines

Google	http://www.google.com/
AllTheWeb	http://www.alltheweb.com/
Teoma	http://teoma.com/
AltaVista	http://www.altavista.com/
Excite	http://my.excite.com/
HotBot	http://hotbot.lycos.com/
Northern Light (no longer free)	http://www.northernlight.com/
WiseNut	http://www.wisenut.com/

Metasearch Engines

Ixquick	http://ixquick.com/
Ask Jeeves	http://www.askjeeves.com/
Metacrawler	http://www.metacrawler.com/

Comparison Charts

Infopeople Project Chart	http://www.infopeople.org/search/chart.html
Search Engine Showdown Chart	http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/features/

Directories

Yahoo!	http://www.yahoo.com/
WWW Virtual Library	http://vlib.org
Librarians' Index to the Internet	http://www.lii.org/
Internet Public Library	http://www.ipl.org/

Non-Traditional Search Mechanisms

Visimo (clustering)	http://vivisimo.com/
Web Brain (visual orientation)	http://www.webbrain.com/html/
Jester (relevance feedback applied to humor)	http://shadow.ieor.berkeley.edu/humor/
Cheshire (latest generation library catalog)	http://cheshire.berkeley.edu/webinterface.html
Kartoo (visualised relationships - metasearch engine)	http://www.kartoo.com

Quality

Quality on the 'Net

http://www.hopetillman.com/findqual.html
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/%7Eagsmith/evaln/

Practical Suggestions

Searching Behavior

Good searching behavior can be considered to proceed in four distinct phases. The first choice is one of location - where you will look for your information. The second phase involves deriving good search terms, which usually means considering your topic or question carefully. The third phase involves framing your question into a format your chosen search engine can handle - posing the query. Fourth, you need to evaluate. Evaluate several things - is your result set of acceptable quality? Did your search capture your desired information? Do you need to rethink your question or somehow modify your initial search?

Choosing Effective Keywords for a Search

Good terms are: