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Search Engines Search Engines What Is a Search Engine? Click here
for a definition. Google Currently Google is
the most popular search engine on the Internet, and offers much more than
websites. It will search for images, video, news, maps and more! Try the
Translate page to get websites translated into other languages... AltaVista Alta Vista gets its
search results from Yahoo!, but is notable for its ability to search for
MP3/Audio and Video as well as retrieve human category listings and news
listings. Babel Fish is the site’s web translation program which translates
websites to and from English,
Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and Russian. LookSmart Danny Sullivan,
Editor in Chief at SearchEngineWatch.com describes LookSmart as “primarily a
human-compiled directory of web sites. It gathers its listings in two ways.
Commercial sites pay to be listed in its commercial categories, making the
service very much like an electronic "Yellow Pages." However,
volunteer editors at the LookSmart-owned Zeal
directory also catalog sites into non-commercial categories for free. Though
Zeal is a separate web site, its listings are integrated into LookSmart's
results.” Teoma Recently merged with
Ask.com, Teoma returns results based on two major criteria: popularity of
websites (how many times users go to that website) as well as websites that are
considered experts in their subject area. It has a very high relevancy rate to
what you are searching for. Search Directories What is a Search
Directory? Click here for a definition. Open Directory Volunteer editors
categorize websites into subject areas. Click on a general subject, and link to
a list of more specific subjects within the general category, until you find
the subject you are looking for. Yahoo Traditionally,
Yahoo! was a search directory, but recently has changed to a combination of
search engine and web directory. You can also search for images, video, audio,
news and shopping sites. Meta Search Engines What is a Meta Search Engine? Click here for a definition. Dogpile This metasearch engine searches Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.com all at once. In the results list, you are told which search engine returned the result. An added feature is the related topics (titled “Are You Looking for?”) listed on the right hand side of the results page, offering additional searches at the click of a button. You can also search images, audio, video, news, yellow pages and white pages. Vivisimo Now called “Clusty”, Vivisimo is a meta search engine that clusters results into categories on the left hand column of the page, that users can click on to narrow their results. Clusty returns only the top several hundred results out of the millions possible, but has a high relevancy rate. Clusty also has the ability to search news, images, Wikipedia, blogs, government sites, shopping and more. Choose your search by clicking on the type of search listed above the search box. Metacrawler This Meta search engine searches Google,
Yahoo Search, MSN Search, Ask Jeeves, About, MIVA, LookSmart and more. Repeated
search results are blended into one listing and repeated sites are eliminated
from the results list. KartOO According to the
website, “KartOO is a
metasearch engine with visual display interfaces. When you click on OK, KartOO
launches the query to a set of search engines, gathers the results, compiles
them and represents them in a series of interactive maps through a proprietary
algorithm. Try KartOO out if you like a visual display for your results. HotBot Searches Yahoo
Directory, Google and Teoma at once, but unlike a meta search engine, it
doesn’t blend all the results into one set of unique web sites. Often, there
are repeated websites within the results. Want more Meta
Search Engines? Go to the Search Engine Watch page. Natural Language Search
Engine Ask Jeeves Type a question in
this search engine, and it will ‘crawl’ the web for relevant sites. It is worth
a try to see if you like it! Danny Sullivan, Editor-in Chief
of the website Search Engine Watch, defines search engines as a term
that is used generically for both search engines and directories. Read his
definition of them: Crawler-Based Search Engines “Crawler-based search engines,
such as Google, create their listings automatically. They "crawl" or
"spider" the web, then people search through what they have found. If you change
your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these changes, and
that can affect how you are listed. Page titles, body copy and other elements
all play a role.” Human-Powered
Directories “A human-powered
directory, such as the Open Directory, depends on humans for its listings. You
submit a short description to the directory for your entire site, or editors
write one for sites they review. A search looks for matches only in the
descriptions submitted. Changing your
web pages has no effect on your listing. Things that are useful for improving a
listing with a search engine have nothing to do with improving a listing in a
directory. The only exception is that a good site, with good content, might be
more likely to get reviewed for free than a poor site.” "Hybrid
Search Engines" Or Mixed Results “In the web's
early days, it used to be that a search engine either presented crawler-based
results or human-powered listings. Today, it is extremely common for both types
of results to be presented. Usually, a hybrid search engine will favor one type
of listings over another. For example, MSN Search is more likely to present
human-powered listings from LookSmart. However, it does also present
crawler-based results (as provided by Inktomi), especially for more obscure
queries.” What is a Search
Directory? A search directory
uses humans to categorize websites into subject areas. Users of search
directories click on a general subject and then a more specific subject until
they locate a list of websites on the topic they are searching for. Search
directories do not “crawl” the Internet the way search engines do. Their
results are updated by having websites submitted to the search directory for
inclusion, or by subject specialists who search the web for reliable sites to
include in the directory. A meta search engine
is a search engine that queries several other search engines all at one time.
The meta search engine then combines the results into one results list.
Metacrawler, for example, searches Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search and Ask! in order
to get their results. This type of search engine is best used when your search
topic is very specific and narrow. |
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