Below you will find lists and descriptions of search engines by type. You can also view another list if you want to see even more. Search Engine History has a good historical overview of web search engines.
| Yahoo: | This search engine has been around for many years and is one of the most widely used. |
| Google: | The most widely used search engine. |
| Duck Duck Go: | Lists options when search terms have multiple meanings. |
| Kosmix: | Divides results by categories, laid out with thumbnails. |
| Yebol: |
Results laid out in a tree diagram by category - or specify desired categories before searching. |
| Bing: | Microsoft’s latest attempt at a search engine. |
| Metacrawler: | Searches multiple other search engines and brings the top results. Search by category and see recommended searches. |
| Dogpile: | An early metasearch engine. Allows for searching by multiple categories. |
| Yippy: | Formerly Clusty. Search and see results by multiple "clouds." |
| Webcrawler: | One of the first search engines. Now exists as a metasearch engine. |
| Leapfish: | Categorized results and an interesting results navigation |
| Mamma: | One of the first metasearch engines. Search categories and view suggested searches. |
| Scirus: | Searches multiple scientific and scholarly sites. Covers most science areas. |
| Science.gov: | Search multiple science-oriented government web sites. Covers most science areas. |
| Vadlo: | Covers biomedical and life sciences. |
| eTBLAST: | Enter a string of text (several paragraphs possible) from a work and find similar results. Search may take some time. Focus is largely medical. |
| Quertle | Search for Biomedical information, including journal literature. |
| GoPubMed | Search for medical information. Search includes links to definitions, Wikipedia articles, statistical information on results, and more. |
| NovoSeek | A biomedical search engine for journal literature. Contains a useful filter option for results. |
| NextBio | Search for biological information, including clinical trials, news, data and journal literature. |
| GEOindex | Search for geological and environmental information. |
| AgriSurf | Search the top agricultural web sites. |
| Intute: | Focuses searches on specific sites. Covers many subject areas. Strong focus on British web sites. |
| Economics Search Engine: | Custom Google search engine focusing on 23,000 economics web sites. |
| SearchGov.com: | Search U.S. government (federal, state, local) web sites. |
| LawCrawler: | Search the web and databases for legal information. |
| Biznar: | Search the deep web for business information. |
| Business.com: | A search engine designed to help businesses make purchasing decisions. |
| ThomasNet: | Search for product, company, or brand information. Also browse by over 67,000 categories. |
| Research Resources for the Social Sciences: | Find resources on social sciences topics. |
| Education Planet: | Search for or browse information on education topics. |
| Education World: | Search for education topics. Includes lesson plans. |
| ZPID PsychSpider: | A psychology-specific search engine that includes data, tests, and also MEDLINE information. |
| Social Psychology Network: | Search thousands of psychology-specific sites. browse or limit searches to specific topics. |
| The First Person: | Search personal letters, diaries, or narratives. |
| Yahoo! Music | Search for musical information. Includes videos, lyrics, news, and more. |
| Grooveshark | Listen to free music online. Search for artists, albums, or specific songs. Includes many genres, including ranging from classical to television theme songs. |
| Playlist.com | Search for and listen to free music online. Share playlists on social networking sites. |
| Artcyclopedia | Search for fine art information. Search artists, work titles, or by museum names/locations. |
| VADS | Search for visual art images (paintings, photographs, posters, sculptures, and more. |
| History Engine | Find information on a wide variety of U.S. history topics. See summaries, links to resources, courses at a variety of colleges/universities, maps, and more. |
| Footnote: | Search for and share documents on U.S. history topics. Currently over 67 million items digitized. |
| American Memory | Search the Library of Congress's American Memory Collections for information on U.S. history. |
Note: Many major search engines have video, audio, and image search options or limits - check these out as well! Some overlap may occur with the formats below.
Data:
| Wolfram|Alpha | Search for topics and get data on them. Compare multiple topics using A v. B format. |
| ICPSR | Find social science data. |
| The Datasets Search Engine | A custom search engine to find datasets on a wide range of topics. |
Images:
| picsearch | Search over 3 billion pictures on the web. |
| TinEye | A reverse image search - upload an image and see where it or other versions can be found. |
| Pixsy | Search images and videos. |
Video:
| TubeSurf | A video metasearch site. |
| blinkx | Search over 35 million hours of video, including music, television, and more. |
| Truveo | Search or browse videos in multiple categories. |
Audio:
See also the list of music resources above under Arts & Humanities
| FindSounds: | Search for a wide range of sounds in multiple formats. |
| podscope: | Search for podcasts (both audio and video). |
| Kazaa: | Search for and download music. |