| Tips on Search Engine Use | Search Engine Watch provides information on the various types of search engines and how to use them. |
| Overviewing or Narrowing a Topic | Yahoo! is excellent for getting a general overview of a topic, or for getting ideas on narrowing a topic. |
| Finding a Few Relevant Hits | Google uses the linking structure of the Internet itself to rank hits in order to present relevant search results. Excite gives brief summaries of hits, and allows you to locate similar pages instantly. |
| Finding Quality, Evaluated Sites | Lycos TOP 5% reviews and rates the "Top 5%" of sites; Webcrawler has a smaller database with relevancy ranking. |
| Metasearch Sites | Metasearch sites search many regular search engines simultaneously, allowing for an instant yet comprehensive search of a subject. MetaCrawler searches and integrates results from the major search engines; Dogpile searches up to 24 search engines simultaneously. Other Metasearch Sites are: 1blink 2Q QuickQuest Cyber411 Highway61 Mamma Searchthe.net Surfy webtaxi.com |
| Narrow Search Terms | Alta Vista is a massive and fast indexer of full text, so it is good for very specific searches. |
| Common Keywords | HotBot is fast and powerful, with ranked results and many options for defining searches. |
| Ignored Keywords | Infoseek includes words that other engines ignore, such as "New" in New Orleans or "A" in Vitamin A. |
| Natural Language Searches | Infoseek and Ask Jeeves! allow natural language searches. |
| Proper Names | Alta Vista and Infoseek use capital letters to force an exact case match on an entire word; HotBot has a person search that will retrieve a name in both reversed and normal order (i.e., Picasso, Pablo and Pablo Picasso). |
| Geographic Regions | MetaCrawler can search by continent, allowing you to find pages from specific geographic regions. |
| Searching by Date | HotBot allows you to limit your search by date. |
| Scientific Information | BioLinks is a search engine focusing on the sciences. |
| Mathematics | MathSearch locates material concerning research-level and university mathematics. |
| Laws and Court Decisions | FindLaw features Supreme Court decisions, legal news, and other law resources; Thomas covers current legislation. |
| Government | Google's Unclesam area focuses on the U.S. Government. |
| News | Both Moreover and Northernlight's News Search allow you to search for current news stories. Google also has their own Google News search engine. |
| Song Lyrics | The Lyricsworld is a search engine specifically for song lyrics. |
| Movies and TV | The Internet Movie Database |
| Image Files | TheVirage AV PhotoFinder at Alta Vista allows you to search for pictures and photos. |
| Printed Catalogs | Google Catalog Search allows you to search hundreds of printed catalogs by keyword. |
| U. S. Directories | AnyWho A toll-free 800 number directory Switchboard Big Yellow Yahoo! People Search |
| Foreign Directories | Canada 411 Global Yellow Pages World Yellow Pages |
| Postal and Telephone Codes | U.S. Postal Code Lookup Area/City/Country Codes Gazetteer British of Place Names |
| Quotations | Bartlett's, The Quotations Page, and Land of Quotes all feature quotations. |
| Encyclopedias | Information Please searches Information Please Almanac, Entertainment Almanac, Sports Almanac, Columbia Encyclopedia, and Random House College Dictionary. |
| Advice and Opinions | Google Groups lets you search archives of Usenet posts; you can also find and join a discussion group with Liszt. |
| General Browsing | Yahoo! is a subject directory with short descriptions of sites. | Browsing for Kids | Yahooligans! is a version of Yahoo! just for kids. |
Adapted from a website by Debbie Abilock, the Nueva School Library, Hillsborough, California, with additional information added by Pat Bailey and Cindy Murdock.
