Search engines are where to begin when you are not sure where to begin. Not all search engines are the same, but generally these tools help you find pages on the Web. These pages can be from companies, publishers, individuals, advocacy groups, lawyers, do-gooders...just about any kind of group or person you could imagine that has an interest in placing the information there. Below are a variety of search engines that work in different ways.
You are likely familiar with at least one of the following general search engines. However, did you
know that many Web indexes have special advanced search or power search forms that
make it relatively easy to use these features in order to get better results?
Examine the power search and help pages of the Web indexes below. Compare the various ways they allow you to refine your search.
All The Web advanced search form and Help
Google advanced search form and Help Center
AltaVista advanced search form and Help
"Meta" means "more comprehensive." A meta-searcher allows you to construct a search and then forward it to many different Web indexes and directories at once. Usually you will view the top 10 results from each of the Web search tools that are contacted by the meta-searcher. Your results will be nicely organized, so that you don't see the same pages listed in results more than once. Because no search tool captures all of the Web, meta-searchers can be very helpful when your search in a Web index has failed to produce useful results. If the pages containing the information you want don't happen to be included in the first Web search tool you use, they may be in another. Rather than try to guess which one, use a meta-searcher.
The Beaucoup! Meta and Parallel Engines page provides a fairly complete listing of various meta-search tools, listing which search engines are included in each. A meta-searcher can't use the advanced search techniques that are not already available in the search engines it searches.
Here are two meta-search tools:MetaCrawler Pulls in results from Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search, Ask, About, MIVA, LookSmart and more. In addition to presenting your results, Metacrawler offers alternate related searches that might be more specific to your need.
Clusty Pulls in results from GigaBlast, Ask, Open Directory, Lycos, Looksmart, Wisenut, MSN Search, and sponsored (paid) listings. The uniqueness of this metasearch is the way it organizes (clusters) results.
| For more detailed information on Web searching tools, refer to netTutor.com: Using Web Search Tools. |
Connect to Google and search for poverty and census.
Try the same search in MetaCrawler.
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