Search the Internet

Search Engines

About.com - A subject index organized into hundreds of guide sites. Contains not only search results but also original content about your chosen subject.

AltaVista - search available in 25 languages (click on settings to change your languages). Also allows you to narrow your results to within the United States.

Ask.com - Pose questions in plain English and get results to relevant sites.

Bing - Good popular culture and shopping search. Includes image, videos, and maps.

BUBL Link - "A catalogue of selected Internet resources covering all academic subject areas and catalogued according to DDC (Dewey Decimal Classification)." Allows you to click on subject areas to narrow down your search.

The Digital Librarian - A well-annotated subject directory. Use the search box or click on a subject area to narrow down your search terms.

Google - Fast, quality searching. Also has news searching (in various languages and countries), images, video, maps and books.

IPL2 - Created by librarians, use the search box or the subject areas to search sites chosen by librarians. Also has a newspaper and magazine area (national, regional and local), kid-specific and teen-specific sites and a special collections area.

IxQuick - A metasearch engine that searches many different search engines. Includes an international phone directory and has various different language and country options. Also has a powerful advanced search page.

Lycos - Includes classified advertisements, people, and job searches.

Open Directory Project (DMOZ) - Use the search box or click on a subject area to narrow your search. Also allows you to perfomr the search on alternate search engines at the bottom of each page.

Yahoo! - A very comprehensive subject directory, including images, shopping, video, maps, and news. A simplified search form is available here. Also available in Spanish.

What is a Search Engine?

Search engines allow you to search for information on the web by using keywords. They then search their database of sites for those words.

Many search engines also divide the Web sites in their database into categories called subject directories. These categories allow you to navigate through a subject from general to specific.

Metasearch engines send the keywords you enter to a number of search engines.

For more information about search engines, metasearch engines, and subject directories, click here.

Questions about Search Engines?

About.com's web site searchengineguide.com has information and comparisons for many different search engines.

Search Engine Showdown and Search Engine Watch also compare information about different search engines as well as giving searching strategies and statistics for each search engine.