|
Virtual Meta Search Information
Page
SEARCH ENGINE'S
Also called spiders or crawlers
constantly visit web sites on the Internet in order to create catalogs
of web pages. They are able to follow links off web pages and index sites
through them. Because they run automatically and index so many web pages,
search engines may often find information not listed in directories.
These are the main search
engines on the net.
Alta Vista
Opened in Dec. 1995, AltaVista is run by Digital and
has gained wide-spread name recognition. It also partnered with Yahoo in
June 1996
Thunder Stone
1981 - Thunderstone - EPI Incorporated in California.
1994 - Web Interface to Texis Released and Webcrawler rewritten
on Texis.
1995 - Webinator Web Walker released.
1997 - Thunderstone push-profiler tops 1,000,0000 queries per second
and their
Automatic Document Categorization engine was released.
Lycos
Around since May 1994, Lycos is one of the oldest of the major
search engines. It began as a project at Carnegie Mellon University. The
name Lycos comes from the Latin for "wolf spider."
Excite
Launched in late 1995, Excite grew quickly in prominence and has
eaten two of its competitors. In July 1996, Excite purchased Magellan.
In November 1996, it acquired WebCrawler. These continue to run as separate
services.
WebCrawler
WebCrawler opened to the public on April 20, 1994. It was started
as a research project at the University of Washington. America Online purchased
it in March 1995 and was the online service's preferred search engine until
Nov. 1996. That was when Excite, a WebCrawler competitor, acquired the
service. Excite runs WebCrawler as an independent search engine. WebCrawler
has an associated directory of reviewed sites, WebCrawler Select.
InfoSeek
Around since early 1995, Infoseek is well-known, well-reviewed
and well-connected. The old "Infoseek Guide" index only had about 1 to
2 million URLs cataloged. In Fall 1996, the new service with 50 million
URLs was introduced.
DejaNews
Founded in May 1995, Deja News, Inc. changed Internet history by
providing the first search engine capable of organizing, indexing and archiving
the content of the most powerful, and two-way communications medium of
all time - Usenet newsgroups. The Deja News user interface provides users
with an easy, powerful and free Web interface for searching the more than
20,000 active discussion groups, 180 gigabytes of information and 138 million
articles in the Deja News database. Each month they serve 3.5 million
unique users generating 75 million page views. read, search, participate
in and subscribe to more than 50,000 discussion forums, including Usenet
newsgroups.
NorthernLight
Northern Light opened to general use on Aug. 12, 1997. It
is quickly becoming a premiere search engine.
HotBot
Launched in May 1996, HotBot is Wired's entry into the search
engine market. The site is powered by the Inktomi search engine. That doesn't
mean it is the same as the UC Berkeley Inktomi catalog, only that it uses
the same technology that created that catalog.
META
SEARCH ENGINE'S
Meta search engines can query
more than one search engine at a time. They then return the results and
eliminate duplicate links.
StartingPoint
A free search and directory site that lets you navigate through
the clutter intelligently. A powerful metasearcher that puts over 170 high-quality,
popular, and comprehensive search tools - general and category specific
- at your fingertips.
MetaCrawler
Go2net took over exclusive operation of the MetaCrawler from Netbot,
Inc. in February, 1997,
and was first released to the Net in June of 1995. It is one of
the fastest and most useful metasearch tools on the Net.
Dog Pile
Search Excite, Yahoo, Lycos, ThunderStone, Webcrawler, GoTo, Magellan,
PlanetSearch, What-U-Seek, InfoSeek, Point and AltaVista .
Savvy Search
Savvy Search - query nineteen search engines simultaneously (AltaVista,
Excite, OpenText and most of the top engines, as well as DejaNews, Shareware.com,
411 People Finder, The Yellow Pages and other directories), it reveals
the results in order of relevance, indicating which search engines contained
which listings. If you check "integrate results," it removes duplicates,
and provides a succinct summary of each of the findings.
MetaFind
Searches PlanetSearch, Excite, AltaVista, Infoseek and Webcrawler.
Inference
Headquartered in Novato, Calif., with international headquarters
in Slough, UK.
Mamma
The idea started in 1996 to provide a smart meta
search on the World Wide Web. Since then
it has grown and expaned to include new research tools and play
a role as a free content aggregator for Web users.
Cyber411
Cyber411 is a parallel meta-search engine. You can
now search up to 16 of the most popular search engines at the same time
by entering a query string just once. The query is reformulated to fit
the syntax of each search engine and the results are gathered, duplicate
URLs are removed and the results displayed as they are received from the
engines. Searches AltaVista, DejaNews, Excite, Galaxy, Goto, HotBot, LookSmart,
Lycos, Magellan, NothernLight, PlanetSearch, Search.com, ThunderStone,
Webcrawler, What-U-Seek and Yahoo.
DIRECTORIES
Unlike search engines, humans create directories.
Sites must be submitted and assigned to an appropriate category or categories.
Because of the human role, directories can often provide better results
than search engines. Directories have organized and
group sites together into categories making them most useful for
browsing top sites, general searching and locating popular sites rather
than for specific or academic searching.
Yahoo
Around since late 1994, Yahoo is the oldest major web site directory.
Yahoo is well-known, well-used and well-respected. It is also the
largest directory (as opposed to search engine), listing 500,000+ web sites,
as of mid-1997. Are you looking for Web sites in a particular category?
Yahoo is the premier subject directory on the Web, easy to navigate and
comprehensive in its listings and additional features. , Yahoo presents
14 broad categories (such as computers/ internet, news and media, regional,
society and culture), on its home page, which link to a large number of
subcategorizes arranged in hierarchical order. Although Yahoo includes
an enormous number of web sites, it is not ideal for all Internet searching.
It does not search the full text of each page, and it frequently lists
duplicates. Yahoo also accepts all pages submitted to it (or located by
it), and does not rate sites - although it does indicate ones which it
most recommends. Yahoo Yahoo's corporate disclaimer reads: "Other than
determining categorization of subject matter at time of listing, Yahoo
makes no attempt to review the content of sites listed in the directory,
and so Yahoo isn't responsible for the accuracy, copyright compliance,
legality or decency of material contained in sites listed in the Yahoo
directory.
Magellan
Magellan rates and reviews many of its comprehensive listings,
and includes a larger percentage of academic resources, as well as web
sites, gopher, ftp, tenet, and newsgroup pages. In addition to English,
you can also access it in French and German. The Magellan directory is
organized into 26 primary topics (such as technology, spirituality, communications,
daily lives, Kidzone, and pop culture), and dozens of sub categories. Within
each division, you can browse, search the entire database, search rated
and reviewed sites only, or specify green light sites - those which possess
no "mature audience content." Rated sites are evaluated according to depth,
ease of exploration and Net Appeal, and given 1-4 stars for a combination
of these criteria.
Point
Are you looking for the top Web sites in a particular category?
Of all the online directories which recommend sites, LYCOS Point TOP 5%
may indeed be the easiest to navigate and read, and the most valuable for
locating quality sites. Here you can find over 10,000 reviews of the best
Web sites, as evaluated by Lycos/Pointcom. These reviews are browsable
by category and rated on a scale of 1-50 according to Content, Presentation
and Experience. You may browse them alphabetically, by date, or by any
of the rating criteria. Although a search engine is available at Lycos,
you may prefer to select from the sixteen categories of reviews, and from
the hundreds of sub categories. Some categories are unique to Lycos - the
Road Less Traveled, which covers spirituality and mysticism, Shopping which
includes virtual malls, and Just for Kids, which rates children's entertainment
and educational sites.
Snap
Powered by Inktomi, Snap has 16 major categories
with hundreds of sub categories in its directory.
PEOPLE
PHONE & EMAIL
These types of engines return
related information in response to a persons name , phone number
and email.
Name format = John Doe
Phone format is ###-###-####
Email format is user@domain.com
WhoWhere
Type in a persons name to find out more information on them.
Possible results may include Phone Number, Address, Email and URL.
DataBase America
Type in a phone number and you can get any information this engine
tracks.
Possible results may include Name, Address, Email and URL.
Banana Pages
This site supports people, phone and email search's.
Type in a persons name, phone number or email to find out more
information on them.
Type in a phone number and you can get any information this engine
tracks.
Type in an email address for information on it's owner.
Press your BACK button to return to the Virtual Meta Search
Engines page.
|