There are 350 million sites out there, doubling every four months... add
to this the 'second' internet (the new 'university connection' net) and the wide and huge
usenet, and you already have a plethora of universes to explore. And there are also all
the old dark web-corridors, made of forgotten archies (and veronikas! :-), 'obsolete'
fidonets and much more... Therefore: where, where, where is the info you need?
Study! If you don't master the sublime art of searching you'll
never find that what you seek!
You'll be able to learn here the first elements of this art. Once you'll have understood
them, you'll be able to go even further (pretty quickly) if you learn perl (THE language
for bots building) and if you will study and research a LOT.
Meanwhile, for a start, you will be able to peruse this 'heavy' search engines page (which
loads quickly anyway, since it does not carry silly backgrounds, useless frames or slow
loading futile publicity). There is also a "light" version, which you
may want to copy onto your hard disk as a quick search starting point.
Since search engines do play a relevant role when searching (duh), I have also added a search engines'
vagaries page, that you may find interesting.
Of course, you should learn how to search the web using inter
alia my own lessons!
Special 'Mover' for this search
engines ('heavy') page
1) Use always lowercase search strings: fravia will fetch
"fravia" and "Fravia"; frAvia will fetch
only "frAvia" occurrences.
2) keep in mind that searching on the web is THE CONTRARY of a search in a normal
library: in a library, the more generic your search, the more easy it is to find what you
are seeking, on the web the more specific your search, the more easy it is to find what
you are seeking. So it is relatively easy to re-find a page that you happen to have read,
even if it has changed site, as long as you remember (well) a part of it. Try it: just cut
and paste into Altavista these words (from my main page) "contains
many teachings, and will help you gain knowledge that you will not find elsewhere. Please
wander slowly inside: sip a good" (Yes, all of the preceding 'blue' words:
don't forget the " and remember that there's no limit at
what you can paste inside a search engine form)... you'll find -amazingly enough- my very
page!
3) It helps to do lots of searches from lots of different search engines, each of the
big engines is different, and each has its own presentation format
For instance, Yahoo does things in categories, Alta Vista uses phrases best, and Lycos is
good for huge keyword searches. Webcrawler gives at times surprisingly good results.
Hotbot has a HUGE database, and is more than good for just quickie searches, anyway as it
seems: Altavista and Hotbot are 'going down', while Infoseek is 'catching up'... Hotbot is
easyly configurated to avoid 'stale' links... well, yes, there are quite a lot of
"must know" differences between all the main search engines.
I still prefer Altavista though... my advice?
Use always (at least) TWO search engines (Infoseek and Altavista IMO) and a directory!
According to myself (and that's not a bad source of info :-) combined searches using
multiple engines increase the likelihood of finding the desired information by 4-5 times.
A very good idea is also to use one of the existing inference robots and
scripts...
3) Check the traffic in your area before starting a web session at http://www.internettrafficreport.com!
Slow connections? Wait for a better moment!
4) DO NOT GET DISTRACTED! Web surfing is terribly distracting! One search session out of
three crashes before reaching the desired target because you got lost on those
'interesting side-trips' that you found on your way (translated, this means that you
moronically just forgot what you originally wanted and began following godzilla knows
which paths). Be coeherent (and be 'hard', man: real seekers are quite concentrated
fellows) write down your target and go for it (and NOTHING else until you find it!)
Devote a minimum of 30 minutes and a maximum of 60 to your search session, that's the best
time range IMO, less isn't enough and more bores. Remember also that real queries are made
in phases: phase one is 'broad', after a while (say a week, you must first digest and
understand what you found) you go for a more concentrated approach, and then, last phase,
you really find what you wanted (after having perused the newsgroups and searched the
archies).
5) Search USENET! Remember that there are THREE search strategies and that usenet
searching is the second and very powerful one!
ONE: you search yourself (searching);
TWO: you use people that have already searched (combing), for
instance on usenet, and use the links and info that they have gathered during
years-long queries (no need to re-invent the wheel every friday)
THREE: you look what kind of people (and from where) come and sniff at the info you
provide on your own sites (klebing)... but that's advanced stuff
and you'll learn it in due time...
6) I would recommend that you turn off auto image loading
before submitting a request to ANY search engine when you'll use the forms below, this
will speed up your searches CONSIDERABLY. (Come to think of it, it's always better to turn
off mage loading IN GENERAL, unless you really need to find/see images). Btw, the control
about image loading options is another of the many fields where the new slick Opera
browser demonstrates its absolute superiority over both browsersaurii...
Please note that there are a couple of "all in one" forms
at the bottom of this nice page
AltaVista is USEFUL: it's the largest Web index, with millions
of Web pages AND articles from usenet newgroups (and these may be REALLY useful).
Altavista is still the search engine of choice for all "old hands" of the web,
yet Infoseek is now (1998) slowly catching up!
AltaVista can also be used to get all the page linked to your page. I
can get with the following link the pages linked to a no more existing page of mine
(useful in order to find stale links): try
it. Another useful method is to use the *HTML TAGS*, if you
for instance search "image:bettie", AltaVista will find quite a lot of images
about Bettie Page.
Search Method: Keyword Data Base System: Full text, largest and more inclusive indices Operators: If used without suitable operators Altavista produce enormous noise and
little signal
For the more paranoids (or the more careful) among you, here is a link
to the anonymized
Altavista search form
(Courtesy of fravia... do not leave your tracks around!)
Yahoo
(it's an attempt to catalogue the entire Web, search on a topic)
Very good for beginners, well organized.
Search Method: Subject and Keyword Data Base System: Limited coverage: indexed by human operators Operators: In keyword searches selects only sites that contain ALL search words. If
no exact match is found switches automatically to AltaVista
Exite
(a concept-based search engine, tries to figure out what you mean). It's
awfully slow, because they want to "impose" you to read the stupid pubs before
getting on with your search. Use it only as last resource or if you are a beginner (it's
very easy).
Search Method: Subject and Keyword Data Base System: Full text, circa 50 millions docs, titles are not searched (or so
it seems) Operators: Automatic word-root search (without the need to use a joker like '*')
and sorting by site
WWW Worm
: It is extremely flexible, allowing regular expression searches on URL,
subject and content. In spite of its flexibility, it's not difficult to use, and there
exist a straightforward tutorial.
Lykos
Big and slow, Lykos has a large number of binary files in its database,
has greater depth than most search engines, because it also indexes FTP archives and
Gopher menus. Besides, you can search with Lykos per email. There are some other
interesting Lykos resources as well, including a list of the frequency of over six million
words used on the Web. Lycos is one of those facilities that's almost too good, presenting
you with more information than you really need, but it's a great resource if you use it
carefully to narrow down your search.
All Sources -- Search the World Wide Web & Special Collection
World Wide Web -- Search the entire World Wide Web
Special Collection -- 1 million articles not on other search engines
Webcrawler
fast and cool, returns surprisingly relevant results. This excellent
search engine indexes the contents of Web documents, so you can find pages that contain a
particular word or phrase.
Good output, their attempt to get "commercial" failed
against the sound Web altruistic spirit (:-), it's now a free service. This claims to be
the largest set of searchable indexes to WWW pages and to USENET newsgroups. 1998:
INFOSEEK is getting better and better! (They value QUALITY very high!)
Search Method:Subject and Keyword Data Base System: Full text, over 50 million pages Operators: detailed instructions under help
HotBot (ex Inktomi, claims to
have the largest index and the best scalability in terms of keeping up with the Web's
exponential growth, claims to be able to re-index the entire Web every week)
Well known for its awful colors, this was one of the BEST search engines available,
unfortunately slowed down by useless graphics frills.
Search Method: Keyword Data Base System: Full text, over 60 millions documents Operators: Simple and advanced... detailed instructions under help
I have decided to use this funny name for those scripts that allow you to query
(almost) simultaneously more than one search engine. I have two forms here for you: inference find and dogpile. Both are mighty
interesting for the casual or the 'hurried' searcher, yet I believe inference find to be a
VERY USEFUL TOOL even for advanced seekers: It will not only query AltaVista, Excite,
Infoseek, Yahoo! and Webcrawler (quite a good and correctly limited choice per
se), but it will present to you SURPRISING RELEVANT ANSWERS in a special formatted
*.htm file that you can IMMEDIATELY DOWNLOAD AND USE!. Here you are:
Here is how you perform an e-mail search on
dogpile... Infact, this is the above form "cracked".
Dogpile searches ALL main search engines and compacts the results for you. Often e-mail
searches are cleverer than live searches on the web (for the same reasons that make
"dead listing" more effective than live winice approach when reverse
engineering, btw :-)
email an Agora server (be ashamed if you do not know what an Agora robot is) with
following TEXT (if you want to search for "numega" AND "softice" for
instance :-)
Really useful search engines allow you to check which strings others are
using as queries. We have already seen (inside the "klebing" search technique
section) how important "alien" search strings are, for each one, in order to
ameliorate your own search strategies... yet it's still pretty funny to check what people
look for... (and pretty sad at times :-( see how frequently people misspell their queries,
and how incredibly often strings like 'Pamela Anderson' or analoguous idiotical
"slave lemmings" subjects get search requests.
use a
"professional" search page on your harddisk!
You should copy the "professional" ("light") version of the search
engines' forms on this same page on your hard disk and choose it as
"bookmarked" or "hot" (or as "favourite" if you are a
Micro$oft's slave). Use it as your "main search engines" starting page. You'll
have quite a lot of advantages:
1) You'll have all main search engines at your fingertips
2) The search starting page won't be fetched from a busy server and will
therefore load immediately
3) The search starting page won't have any images (and therefore don't suffer ANY
delay whatsoever)
4) The search starting page will spare you HOURS of connection wasted time!
5) The search starting page will be edited by YOU with your own additions and
comments! (send me any interesting addition :-)
"light" version, which you
may want to copy onto your hard disk as a quick search starting point.