If you've know anything about the internet, you've probably heard that there are special places where you can go to find websites with information. These sites are better known as "Search Engines." "Search Engines" are websites that connect to huge computers that have incredible amounts of information indexed for easy retrieval. Similar to the Duey Decimal system in the library, search engines don't necessarily contain the information, but have "indexed" the location of where to find the information.
Like any commercial business, these sites must make money. They do that by offering their service to you for free, while they sell advertising space to companies that are then viewed by you before and after you search for something. There are several search engine website companies on the internet. Each company tries to index their information more efficiently then the next. Some sites contain indexed information about all topics, while others index only specific information, like names and addresses.
Yahoo - Yahoo is an all purpose search engine that provides a wide range of indexed links. This was the premiere search engine a few years ago, but has digressed considerably over the last 12 months. Several links are old and no longer in existence, and it is almost impossible to get a link added to their database. Yahoo is however, a good location to start, because they have the most comprehensive system to cross-reference their lesser results with other more up to date search engine services.
Excite - Similar to Yahoo, Excite is an all purpose search engine that is very up to date, and very easy to add a URL to. The search results are very effective, and give you a percentile rating of how closes their results match your search words.
Alta Vista - At one time Alta Vista was the premiere search engine of all time. Created by the Digital Corporation, Yahoo used to use their index databanks for some of their information. Alta Vista is a very large source of information. Results vary in accuracy, but you usually find what you're looking for. Be prepared to sort through several links that don't apply to what you are looking for, but remember that this is a huge database.
InfoSeek - Infoseek is an all purpose search engine that provides not only a global search engine for any subject you might be looking for, but it also provides an online Dictionary and Thesaurus for quick word look-ups. The results are rated and adding a URL to InfoSeek is very simple.
Webcrawler - Webcrawler has a slightly different spin then other all purpose search engines, in that it offers links into Yellow Pages, Stock Quotes, Classifieds, Weather, People Finding, and many other interesting services. If you don't find what you're looking for, they have a cross-reference link to Excite for more searching. Webcrawler also provides a service that allows you to enter a profile of your favorite type of websites to surf to. Each time you visit, you can view only the pages that you like. Webcrawler will continue to find new web pages that match your interests.
Argus Clearinghouse: Argus is arranged by academic subject with links to Virtual Libraries, directories, and search tools.
Magellan - Magellan is a Web navigational and informational directory, containing listings for approximately 4 million sites, many of which are reviewed and rated.
The WWW Virtual Library- The WWW Virtual Libary is a comprehensive subject catalogue of Web sources put together by the creators of the World Wide Web.
Starting Point - Starting Point has web sites organized in the following categories: business, computing, education, entertainment, investing, magazines, news, reference, shopping, sports, travel, and weather.
World Wide Web Worm - The World Wide Web Worm a comprehensive Web search engine that links to citation hypertext, citation addresses (URL), HTML titles and HTML addresses.
All-in-One - The All-in-One search page will link you to 120 or so WWW search tools and directories, plus hundreds of other specialized search tools and search interfaces (people lookups, school and company lookups, publications, etc.) via a common interface.
Search.com - Search.com will link you to over 250 ways to search the Net, and allows you to create a personalized interface to their collection:
Hot Bot - Hot Bot is another all purpose search engine that provides similar services like Webcrawler. Unlike other engines that allow cross-referencing, this service is a one try searching experience with no cross-reference helper links.
Lycos - Lycos is a very nice search engine. There aren't any cross-reference features, but it does provide a large amount of pre-determined search categories to search from.
Dogpile - Dogpile is the search engine for search engines. Dogpile searches the databases of other search engines and gives you the top results from them all.
Yellow Pages - If you are looking for a company that produces a particular product then the Yellow Pages is the place to start. It's just like your local Yellow Pages; it contains everything. Owned and operated by Yahoo, this service can come in handy if you're looking for specific products or services.
People Search - People Serach can help you if you are looking for an old war buddy, an old class mate, a childhood friend, or a movie star? This is the great place to start your serach. You'll have to have at least a clue where the person lives, but even if you don't, you'll be amazed at what you find. The more information that you can enter about the person you're looking for, the better chance you will have a greater chance of finding them. This site is owned and operated by Yahoo.
Yahoo Maps - If you have some place to go to, but you don't know how to get there, this search engine can help. Yahoo Maps uses an incredible amount of city map information to find exactly how to get you where you want to go. You can even find data on to and from routes. This site is owned and operated by Yahoo.
To add your site to Yahoo, connect to their Web page at http://yahoo.com/yahoo/bin/add and fill in the blanks.
To place your Web page in the Lycos database go to http://lycos.cs.smu.edu/lycos-register.html, enter the url for your site and the system will visit and catalog your site for their database.
With Webcrawler you connect to http://webcrawler.cs.washington.edu/WebCrawler/SubmitURLS.html and simply enter the url for your site, which they will visit for indexing in their system.
