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SEARCH ENGINES




InfoSeek Excite Lycos Yahoo Alta Vista
Magellan HotBot WebCrawler SavvySearch


The previous buttons are search engines for searching for information on the Web. Each search engine has its own strengths and weaknesses. A short description of each is found below.


InfoSeek - Easy to use search engine with a wide scope and many helpful auxilliary tools. You can even set up a personal custom news page through InfoSeek Personal.

Excite - Fast, big search engine with good relevancy ranking.

Lycos - Large index covers much of the Web with A2Z directory listing of sites. However it is slow and some of the links are out-of-date.

Yahoo - Easy to search directory with full text searching from AltaVista built-in. Links aren't always up-to-date.

Alta Vista - One of the largest and fastest search engines with sophisticated search options. However, it has poor relevancy ranking.

Magellan - Family-oriented directory with many reviewed sites. However, it is slow and limited in its scope.

Hot Bot - Very fast searching but has a small index and is difficult to create a complicated search.

Web Crawler - Easy to use and relatively fast but has a smaller than most directory.

SavvySearch - This is a consolidated search engine which submits your search request to a number of other search engines. It can be slow and is limited to 50 hits but it has many options for refining your searches.


Tips For Searching

The following are the different operators to use when searching for information using a search engine:

+ (plus sign) - this marks words that MUST appear in each Web page on the query results list - the query +falcon maltese peregrine will return only pages mentioning falcons and some of those may contain the words maltese or peregrine

- (minus sign) - this marks words that CANNOT appear in any Web page on the results list Use this to exclude pages containing certain words - ex. the query "orient express"-train will return pages about the Orient Express, but not the train.

" (quotes) - indicates the exact multiple word phrase to search for. If no quotes the search engine will search for each word in the phrase individually. - the query "read my lips" will return a list of Web pages containing that exact phrase whereas the query read my lips will return pages with read and lips and my within them.

AND - this connects 2 search items; both of which must MUST appear in each Web page on the results list

OR - connects 2 words, at least one of which must appear on each Web page on the results list - this is a good way to connect synonyms or alternative spellings, as in the query sleuth OR detective.

NOT - is used much like the minus sign to exclude words. You must use it with AND or OR - ex. the query bogart AND NOT casablanca returns other Humphrey Bogart films other than Casablanca.

() parentheses - this groups sets of advanced operators - the query detective and (marlowe or spade) will turn up Web pages about one or both detectives.