== This means that this search engine provides a subject breakdown of the terms used in the search.
Search
Engines
A search engine is a software program that enables you
to search an index that has been created by a tool called a spider, or crawler,
or robot. The spider's job is to search the Internet for pages to put into
the index. These search tools in this category all use a spider
to crawl the Internet. Use search engines when you want to find everything
on a topic, or if your topic is very specific.
For a list of more search engines, see Danny Sullivian's list
of Major
Search Engines at his SearchEngineWatch page.
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Meta Search Engines or Metacrawlers
Meta search engines allow you to search more than one search
engine at once. There are two main kinds of meta search engines: those
that bring together many search tools on one page and allow you to perform searches
on those search tools one at a time, and those that allow you to search several
search tools at once.
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Deep Web Search Engines
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Ask a Question sites
Social Search Engines (Web 2.0)
Image Search Engines
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Blog Search Engines
Wiki Search Engines
Discussion List Search Engines
Podcast Search Engines
Subject
Guides and Directories
A subject guide or directory is a list of Internet sites
that have been categorized or assigned a subject by a human. They
are going to be much smaller that the search engines, but sometimes more
useful that the search engines because often search engines bring back millions
of pages and the first ones listed many not be the best. A directory
has far fewer sites but they are likely to be the better ones. Use a directory
when you want fewer hits to look through.
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Lists of Internet Search Tools
Meta search engines usually allow you to search several search engines
from the same page. There are other places on the Internet that just list
the names of search tools, or evaluate search tools. This is where
they are located.
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Rating and
Review Services
The search tools in this category all use some criteria to
select the Internet resources in their directory. Sure, most directories
are filled with sites that have been chosen by an editor, but these sites in
this category evaluate and rate Internet sites.
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People and Business Search Tools
These search tools allow you to search for specific types of
information such as: names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail
addresses.
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Specialty Search Tools
These are search tools that don't fit anywhere else
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Teaching Web Searching
Help with Using Search Tools and
Searching the Internet
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Subject Search Tools
Subject search tools search only one main topic. Subject search tools
will be found under each topic on the Library's Internet
Resources by Subject page
NOTE: While every effort is made to ensure the accuracy
of these pages, errors may occur on occasion. Please verify any information
obtained on these pages with the relevant department before relying on
the information for anything critical.
Maintained by Library Web Service
Last Updated: August 20, 2008
