Search Engines & Directories

Search Engines -- Built by computer robot programs ("spiders"), not by human selection. Pages are ranked by a computer algorithm, NOT organized by subject categories. You find pages by matching words in the pages you want and often retrieve a lot of information. YOU must evaluate everything you find. Use specific words that will be in the pages you want. Use quotes (" ") to form phrases, and OR (capitalized) to search for either of two or more words or "phrases."
Google HUGE. Claims over 4 billion.	AlltheWeb (Fast)
Ask.com LARGE. Claims to have 1 billion fully indexed, searchable pages, and 1 billion more partially indexed.	Go.com
Yahoo Search HUGE. Over 3 billion fully indexed, searchable pages.	Lycos
Altavista	Northern Light
Multi-Engine Searches -- Engines that search a group of search engines.
Dogpile	Mamma
Excite	Metacrawler
Hotbot	Search (SavvySearch)
Subject Directories -- Built by human selection -- not by computers or robot programs, are organized into subject categories, don't contain full-text of the web pages they link to -- you can only search what you can see (titles, descriptions, subject categories, etc.) Best to use broad or general terms. Keep searches simple.
About.com About 1 million sites on many subjects, selected and evaluated by "guides." Evaluate their credentials as experts in their field. Uneven quality but often worth consulting. Shopping, chat, and casual emphasis can be annoying.	MSNBCi (Snap)
Academic Info Rich collection of web pages, databases, links to full-text publications, organizations selected primarily for academic research at the undergraduate level and above. Help	OneKey
Education World Web site for educators -- lesson plans, research materials, search engine for educational web sites only, original content, including lesson plans, how to integrate technology in the classroom.	Study Web
Infomine Collection of over 114,000 well annotated scholarly links reflecting selected university-level subjects/disciplines. Help.	Yahoo The biggest and best subject directory. Scarce evaluations. Page authors often supply what you see, not Yahoo! editors.
LookSmart
Subject Databases Contain collections of pages that have been assembled by people about a subject. They are not found by search engines and rarely are in subject directories.
A Collection of Search Engines A browsable list of many resources. Invisible Web sites begin about 1/3 the way down the page.	Internets Large collection of searchable databases.
Complete Planet A huge collection of searchable databases that also contains other types of sites.	The Invisible Web Claims to be the largest collection of searchable databases on the Web.
Direct Search From Gary Price, author of the List of Lists (above), a browsable collection of useful links to over 800 searchable sites on many research topics.	Education World Database Browse by general topics for educators.
Freeality Internet Search Browsable collection of mostly popular searchable databases with some good niche categories of possible academic interest.
Virtual Reference Libraries (Online dictionaries, handbooks, directories, indexes, etc.)
Encyclopedia Britannica	Langenberg.Com Convenient collection of search boxes to different types of resources.
The Internet Public Library Reference Center Attempt to replicate a library reference room "without walls" on the Internet. IPL is similar to using a reference room, with links to many resources by type and/or subject.	UCB Library Reference Resources Collection of hundreds of reference resources about UC, UCB, other universities and libraries, and many general reference resources. Also links to many online reference and full-text resources.
iTools Superbly convenient layout of basic reference tools (dictionaries and more).