Searching The Internet

Useful Search Engines

Clusty http://www.yippy.com

Formerly named "clusty.com" Yippy is highly recommended to PHHS students and staff and includes some of the latest and geatest search features. Especially valuable is its ability to sort "clusters" of websites by URL suffix, and allow a searcher to target and focus upon ".edu" or ".org" websites in the returns he or she generates.

Infomine http://infomine.ucr.edu

Informine is highly recommended to PHHS students and staff. It is a scholarly multi-purpose academic search engine created by a the University of California in collaboration with other instituations of higher learning.

AltaVista http://www.altavista.com

This is one of the most powerful and comprehensive search engine available. Searches both the World Wide Web and Usenet groups. Allows complex searching and returns large number of hits. Database updated daily.

Excite http://www.excite.com

Powerful search engine that is easy to use. Excite permits concept based searching. Type queries in plain English. After viewing your hits, identify a good site and click on "More Like This" option. Excite also maintains a database of 150,000 sites that are visited and evaluated by the search editors. Select "Power Search" page and use the "I want to search" drop-down menu. Click on "Selected Web Sites" from the list.

HotBot: http://www.hotbot.com

Easy to use and very fast search engine. Drop-down menus replace the need for special punctuation marks and Boolean operators.

All The Web: http://www.alltheweb.com

This search engine encourages plain English queries and permits the narrowing down of topics. It also gives suggestions for related topics. Best hits are listed first and all hits include a "confidence rating," a measure of how well it matches your query.

Lycos: http://www.lycos.com

One of the best features of Lycos is access to its ratings and reviews. Editors select the "Lycos Top 5%" of sites for design, content and over-all appeal. Lycos is an excellent choice for locating graphics, video and sound files.

Yahoo: http://www.yahoo.com

Yahoo is somewhat different from other search engines in that it attempts to organize and catalogue the Web by creating a hierarchical subject index. Internet users and web site creators complete a form describing the site and recommending where it should be placed in the Yahoo directory. When you need a few good sites on a topic and want to explore in an organized fashion, this is the site for you.

Remember, every search engine has a help page to assist you.