Introduction to Search Engines and Directories
What are "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.
What are "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
What are "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.