Web Search
A guide that highlights ten ways for anyone to search the web.
Some definitions to help us get started:
Search Engines (e.g. Google) allow users to find websites
on topics using spiders or robots to collect information from the Internet.
Subject Directories (e.g. Yahoo!) are lists of sites
created and searched by the staff of the company. So when you search here,
your first results will be looking within this fixed list of sites, as
opposed to the more changing results you might get when you search the
internet.
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Subject Librarian:
Ann Brown
Location: Gelman Library
Email: agbrown@gwu.edu
Phone: 202-994-1351
Updated: April 2006
Need Help? Click 
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MetaSearch Engines (e.g. Profusion) actually put your
search through several search engines and bring back all of the results
in one place. This is helpful because no one search engine searches everything
on the Internet. |
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Please rate this guide. See the bottom of this page.
The URL for this page is
- NoodleTools:
Choose the Best Search for Your Information Need
- Location: http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html
- If you're really struggling to figure out which search engine to start
with, this awesome site cross-references search engines with your research
needs!
- Google
- Location: http://www.google.com
- Who doesn’t know Google? It is the first place, and one of the most comprehensive
engines, many searchers go to find information in a variety of formats, be it
PDF, image, or text. Google is well known for delivering relevant results, due
largely to its way of ranking sites by popularity. But did you know about the
other pieces of Google such as Google Uncle Sam, location: http://www.google.com/unclesam,
which searches only United States government websites? And Google Directory,
location: http://directory.google.com, which is a Subject Directory? Let’s
not forget their newest ventures: Google Scholar and Google Book.
- MSN Search
- Location: http://search.msn.com
- MSN Search has recently undergone many changes. They are now a search engine,
and a directory; and they support advanced searching. Results are pulled from
a variety of sources, including sites selected by MSN editors, sites crawled
by Inktomi, and even the Encarta encyclopedia. This blend gives MSN Search a
unique view of the web and helps to make it one of the top search engines.
- Ask.com
- Location: http://www.ask.com
- Ask.com has combined three popular search engines, HotBot, Teoma, and the ever
popular Ask Jeeves into one to create a more robust search engine, with a focus
on the most authoritative websites for your searches.
- Yahoo!
- Location: http://search.yahoo.com
- As a directory of websites identified by Yahoo! staff as good, the company
is also working with Google to expand their results. They offer web, directory,
news, yellow pages, images, and searches. All of which makes Yahoo! one of
the most popular starting points on the web.
- About.com
- Location: http://www.about.com
- About.com feels that people are the best “Guides to the Internet”.
It features a staff of "editors" who create extensive guides to
information sources on popular topics. It is also highly-ranked for consumer
information and advice.
- Librarian’s Index to the Internet
(LII)
- Location: http://lii.org/
- A directory of over 10,000 internet resources selected and annotated by librarians.
An excellent starting point for finding key sites on a particular topic. Browse
by category or search by keyword.
- Clusty
- Location: http://clusty.com
- Clusty is a clustering search engine that automatically sorts and organizes
results into categories created from words and phrases prevalent in the search
results. It searches MSN, Ask.com, and Open Directory, just to name a few.
- Profusion
- Location: http://www.profusion.com
- Searches thousands of archives, specialized search engines, databases, and
other resources typically not indexed by the larger search engines. You can
even set up alerts, where Profusion will automatically search your topic and
send you any updates or changes.
- Dogpile
- Location: http://www.dogpile.com
- Unlike the other meta search engines mentioned here, Dogpile blends sponsored
sites (i.e. page owners pay to have their sites appear in the top of your
search results) and non-sponsored sites at the top of your search results.
Keep this in mind as you review the validity of your results.
For more information, call the Reference Desk at 202-994-6048 or use the E-mail
Reference Form. This page is maintained by Ann
Brown
Research Guides Home
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Your comments will help us to improve the Guides. All submissions are anonymous. If you would like a response, please send an e-mail to refdesk@gwu.edu
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