SITES OF INTEREST - Search Engines/Tools/Forms

You may click on any of the highlighted links to go directly to a particular group of search engines or use the scroll bar on the right to view this entire page.

Primary Search Engines are what the majority of WWW users turn to when they are looking for a fact, name, subject or organization. Of these, Alta Vista, Excite, InfoSeek, Lycos, Magellan, Open Text, Webcrawler and Yahoo are the best known and most frequently used.

Secondary Search Engines work just like the above but the information they access is limited by editorial intent or by focus on a particular topic area.

The Miscellaneous Search Engines are further limited by their focus on one particular Internet information exchange protocol, organization or company.

Multiple Search Engine Pages are convenient when you do not have a page like this to use. Usually eight to ten of the major search engines are represented. The graphical form version of the keyword query is often used for visual impact.

Search Engines Which Access Multiple Directories / Servers - certainly the wave of the future. Instead of visiting search engines one by one or filling out multiple forms, you ask one general question and this program visits a number of WWW directories and asks the questions for you. Although still crude, this type of search engine is the forerunner of the "intelligent agents" you hear so much about in discussions about the future of the Internet.

Special directories are helpful for Finding People / Organizations on the WWW. These are the commonly-used services.

The World Wide Web Virtual Library, the original WWW indexing system, maintains comprehensive lists of information sources. Three examples are presented.

Here are a few Handy Tools you might find useful. Several Yellow Page type services are listed along with a way to check for available domain names.