Back to ATLAS Main Page

 

Search Tools

 

Search Tool

URL

Description

About.com

http://about.com

Real people offer expert guidance on the Internet’s best; search a wide range of subject areas

Alexa

http://www.alexa.com

View a site’s address, traffic volume, user ratings and related links.  Block pup ups and access archived copies of sites.

AltaVista

http://www.altavista.com

Database of Internet resources including WWW pages and some Usenet newsgroups

Ask Jeeves

http://ask.com

Asks you to type in an actual question.  The software identifies a variety of possible answers to your question. 

Ask Jeeves for Kids

http://www.ajkids.com

Kid’s version of Ask Jeeves

Bookmarklets

http://www.bookmarklets.com

Right click on highlighted links to add a “Favorite” or “Bookmark.” Click on saved bookmark to show a page’s freshness, links, email addresses, etc.

Copernic

http://www.copernic.com

Download products for free or pay for enhancements.  Create toolbars, do multiple searches, summarize results, check for page changes

Dogpile

http://www.dogpile.com

Searches 26 databases simultaneously and supports Boolean searches

Excite

http://www.excite.com

Collects the “most popular” frequently accessed Internet sites.  It is unique because it searches by concept

Fast Search

http://alltheweb.com

Has one of the largest indexes of the Web.  The site is also known as All The Web

Foreign Languages

Alltheweb, Google, Hotbot, ixquick, Vivisimo

Almost all general and metasearch engines allow you to search in different languages.  Google also offers the ability to translate text or web sites to/from a number of Western European languages.

Google

http://www.google.com

Searches for sites based on popularity and these sites are ranked by how many sites have links to them

Google

http://toolbar.google.com

View data about similar or linked sites.  See search terms highlighted, block pop ups and restrict hits to a specific country.

Google (cached sites)

http://www.google.com

After typing in a search string, click on the “cached” link below a returned result to view an older version of that page.

Google Scholar

http://scholar.google.com

Searches for scholarly material on the web or at the closest participating library, including your own. Use advanced features to restrict your search by author, date, publication.

Google Web Directory

http://directory.google.com

Database of sites organized by subject categories.  This directory has over 1.3 billion pages and is considered the largest database

HotBot

http://www.hotbot.lycos.com

Provides a number of search options and ranks search results by relevancy

Internet Archive

http://archive.org

Type URL in the “Wayback Machine” to find an old version of a web page. Do an advanced search by date and capture redirects and aliases, remove duplicates and compare older versions of a page.

ixquick

http://ixquick.com

Brings for the best engines (11) on the Internet and merges the results.  It removes redundancies and puts the results into a grouping. Highlights your search terms.

KidsClick!

http://www.kidsclick.org

Created by a group of librarians, shows students sites for grades k-8

Kids Surf Zone

http://www.pcsurf.com/links/kids

Popular kids site & tools on the Web with 1000’s of links

LookSmart

http://looksmart.com

Searchable, category-based Web directory

Lycos

http://www.lycos.com

Cross between Yahoo and AltaVista.  It also enables you to search for images

MetaCrawler

http://metacrawler.com

Searches many search tools quickly and at the same time

Open Directory Project

http://dmoz.org

One of the most comprehensive search tools with millions of sites

Search Engine Watch

http://www.searchenginewatch.com

Web searching tips including search engine reviews and news.

Search Engine Showdown

http://searchengineshowdown.com

Review the strengths of various search engines.  Peruse statistics, reviews, charts and side-by-side comparisons.

Veoda

http://www.veoda.com

Searches 4 of the largest engines including Google, MSN & Yahoo.

Yahoo

http://yahoo.com

Popular hierarchical directory.

Yahoo!

http://search.yahoo.com

A simplified look to Yahoo

Yahooligans

http://www.yahooligans.com

A kid’s version of Yahoo

Web crawler

http://www.webcrawler.com

Searches content areas and is also a web directory

 

 

 

 

Resources

 

Luehr, Paul H.(July, 2005). Internet Tools, Stroz Friedberg, LLC

 

Sharp. Vicki (2004) Computer Education for Teachers, Boston, McGraw-Hill.

 

 

 

Dana D. Luehr, MEd., © October 2006