Introduction to Search Engines and Directories
Search Engines
Search engines produce there results from databases. These databases are automatically created and actualized by a special program called a spider, robot or crawler.Each search engine indexes its results by ranking them according to relevancy as defined by its own unique algorithmic scoring method.
- Search form & tips - AlltheWeb (Fast)
- Search form & tips - AltaVista
- Search form & tips - Google
- Search form & tips - WiseNut
Subject Directories
Subject directories are databases containing collections of Internet files that are categorized by subject heading, and rated for relevancy and annotated by a person. Because Subject Directories involve human intervention in selecting and organizing resources they cover fewer resources but provide more quality.- Search form & tips - Librarians' Index to the Internet
- Search form & tips - Open Directory Project (odp)
- Search form & tips - Yahoo
Meta-Search Engines
Meta-search engines transmits your search keywords simultaneously to several individual search engines and compiles and displays those results. So you get a snapshot of the top results from a variety of search engines. A meta-search engine does not maintain its own database.Meta-search engines are good for simple search queries.