General Purpose
The following are general purpose search engines available on the internet.
Google is arguably the most well-known search engine on the internet. Made effective not only by its vast crawler-compiled catalogue of both current and cached and viewable websites, Google employs a myriad of useful tools, including image search and a comprehensive advanced search feature, to provide the user with the exact results required. As one of the original hubs of activity on the internet, Yahoo enjoys strong and loyal viewership. Yahoo was the internet's first web directory, and provided categorized lists of sites which were compiled by humans. Yahoo has since switched to a crawler-style sytem. Despite this, the human-compiled directory lives on. Although primarily focused on pages within the Yahoo family of sites, Yahoo provides a myriad of search tools, many of which (eg. yahoo images, yahoo video) are comparable to Google's offerings. The strength of the Yahoo community is where Yahoo really shines as a search engine, however, providing access to exclusive content only available through Yahoo. Originally known as Ask Jeeves, ask.come quickly gained popularity due to its ability to accurately return results to queries formatted as natural questions. Upon its inception, ask.com employed over 100 editors whose sole purpose was to monitor search logs and add sites to the searchable directory based on the most popular queries. Ask.com has since switched over to a crawler-styled method of compiling its directory, but still supports naturally phrased questions. Altavista was the first large-scale multi-threaded crawler based search engine, and was introduced in late 1995. Famous for its unintrusive search page, large database, and babelfish translation Altavista enjoyed strong popularity. The site dabbled with a portal-styeld interface akin to Yahoo.com, but soon abandoned the effort in favour of its original search specific nature due to loss of interest by its users. Despite being a closed community, due to its large number of users, AOL can hardly be ignored. Although powered by google's index, AOL's internal search feature is notable due to the fact that it provides its internal (ie. member) users with information and results not available to those external to its network. Another of the web's original directory-based search engines, Excite now employs the standard crawler-type database management system. Excite boasts a relatively large database, and wide name recognition. Using an index provided by Yahoo, alltheweb focuses entirely on searching, allowing it to provide the fastest and most current listings available. Lycos was originally founded as a search engine, and retains that functionality today. Its primary focus, however, has shifted to being a community-styled portal for broadband entertainment, which has allowed it to remain popular. Rather than relying solely on crawler-based technology, Lycos uses the human created indices of LookSmart for more popular queries, and turns to Yahoo's database for more obscure searches. Dmoz is an entirely volunteer-based internet catalog. All of its information is added by a network of volunteer editors. Search and result algorithims, however, are poor, and users are often better off browsing categories in search of their topic of interest. Created by Microsoft to compete with Yahoo and Google, Live Search uses a large and regularly compiled crawler-based index to provide users with results. This, combined with advanced options and the ability to view cached pages, make Live Search a viable search option. Searchking is a human controlled directory featuring hand reviewed, non-sponsored pages. The site is focused on building a searchable directory of Vmgo allows users to search its crawler-based directory, and to rate results based on a like / dislike / spam basis. The idea behind the site is that spam and useless pages should not inconvenience someone during their search, and so spam is removed, while disliked sites are demoted. Liked sites, of course, are promoted. Lexxe Alpha is a self deemed "third generation search engine" that accepts both natural language queries and keyword search entries. When presented with a natural language query, Lexxe both provides standard search results, and attempts to andwer the question asked in a concise sentence or phrase. Majestic-12 is a distributed search engine project aimed at creating one of the largest search directories in the world. By using the distributed power of volunteer user nodes set up on personal computers, Majestic-12 is capable of covering vast areas of the internet with its crawler algorithm, and return results to its master server, which is in turn searchable. Scrub the Web provides a user submission based catalogue of websites. In addition to submitting a site, a user is required to index and categorize it for use in the Scrub the Web search engine. While the engine's administrators try to review submissions and remove irrelevant sites, there is some amount of erroneous information that makes its way into the database. Yoople uses results from Google and Yahoo to provide users with a system in which they can drag and drop results to order them how they prefer. this, in turn, increases or decreases the result's "Yoople rating", which is stored for future searches. Rollyo takes a fresh approach to search engine use- it allows the user to select exactly which sites they want to query, thus eliminating unwanted results. Although it requires a speedy internet connection, Pagebull's usefulness far outweighs its requirements. Based on its own crawler-based directory, Pagebull displays thumbnails of the sites that it returns, rather than a textual list, allowing users to preview the recommendations without actually browsing to the sites. Surfwax allows users the choice of sorting results by relevance, source, or alphabetically, and provides an easy interface through which the user can further refine their search using "FocusWords" derived from the search results. Powered by Google, Search The Tail is a variation on cluster searching, and allows users to select from a list of relevant search terms that can be ordered either by popularity or alphabetically. powered and run by Microsoft's Live Search, Ms. Dewy is an "interactive" flash driven search engine interface with a virtual human presence who is your host for your searching experience. The search results are identical to those provided by standard Live Search, but are presented in a (supposedly) more entertaining manner. Slideshow allows the user to select one of three search engines (Google, Live.com, and Yahoo), and displays results in the form of a slideshow of pictures taken from the results returned. The user can click on any picture presented to browse the containing site. usabilityviews.com/simply_google.htm Simply Google takes Google's various search options and displays them all in a list on a single page, making finding exactly what you want much simpler. Gigablast set out to create an index of up to 200 billion pages using the most efficient hardware possible. The result was a search engine that has attracted a myriad of clients, and a very comprehensive directory. Searches are futher tailorable using Gigablast's categories upon receipt of results, or through the use of the advanced search feature. Mnemomap provides a visual and text-based search experience. By simultaneously searching a standard crawler-based directory and social networking sites, Mnemomap outputs both standard results and a visual result map based on keywords that categorizes results according to types, and provides further keywords for search refinement, all in real-time. Chacha provides two services: The first is a standard searchable crawler-based directory with entries that are both managed and added to by Chacha staff. The secon, and most interesting, is a free membership based search where the user connects with a Chacha agent, who asks the user for information in order to refine the search, eventually netting results that are exactly what the user was looking for. Mooter provides users with a visual cluster map of topics based on their search, without the standard list of results. Once the user has narrowed down the search by choosing a topic, they are taken to a more standard search result screen, but with topics still present in a side panel. This allows the user to decide what topic are relevant from the beginning of the search process, rather than relying on complicated syntax or search engine logic. Lurpo isn't a search engine, but is instead a navigable directory of search engines. With a focus on user-created Google custom search engines, Lurpo has compiled a list of the most interesting and useful CSE's, and placed them in one directory. More of a search engine supplement, girafa can be implemented by a search engine or by the end-user as a browser toolbar, and provides thumbnail images of the text links returned by search engines, all without the user having to load the pages themselves. This allows for reduced redundancy, and less strain on the user's system. Mojeek boasts its own independent crawler-based directory, with no paid inclusions or personal interests. This allows Mojeek to be a truly unbiased search engine that will return its own unique results, with no weighting given to any particular group of sites. Quintura provides users with a more visual way of refining their search by producing a "word cluster" to the left of search results, allowing users to dynamically add or negate related keywords to their search string without the use of search modifiers and / or boolean language. Boing searches its index of the mobile web, or the web optimized for mobile devices such as cellular phones and PDA's. |