AltaVista
Excite
HotBot
Infoseek
Lycos
Open Text
WebCrawler
Meta-searchers:
MetaCrawler
SavvySearch
search.com
AltaVista
http://altavista.digital.com/
Provider: Digital Equipment Corporation
Browsable index: No
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: Robot, also takes human submissions
Selection of Resources/Who Selects?: No
Annotated: Yes, from the page itself
Notable features: Size of the index, speed of retrieval
FAQ: No, for the product. Yes, for simple, and advanced search.
AltaVista indexes millions of Web pages as well as the text on those pages. It also provides access to thousands of Usenet newsgroups. Boolean AND/OR/NOT searching is supported, as well as phrase, proximity, truncation, and field searching. AltaVista provides feedback in order of relevance, but does not provide relevance scores. It has two detailed FAQs for searching that are essential to exploit the power of the system. It also offers LiveTopics, which, from a retrieved search page, provides the user grouped tables of related terms for adding to or deleting from the search.
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Excite
http://www.excite.com/
Provider: Excite, Inc.
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: Robot, also takes human submissions
Selection of Resources/Who Selects?:No for search engine. Yes for browsable index/excite Editors
Annotated: Yes, from the page itself for the searchable index. Yes, by excite editors for the browsable index.
Notable feature: Size of index, concept based searching
FAQ: Yes, for the product and the searching system
Excite indexes millions of Web pages and Usenet news articles. Its Intelligent Concept Extraction (ICE) search engine is based on concept searching, but also supports Boolean AND/OR/NOT, and phrase searching. Users may search by "concept" or key words. Concept based searching is easier and can yield larger retrieval, but can be confusing in that it sometimes returns sites that are not related to the query. Excite offers relevance feedback, returning different colored icons based on the level of relevance, and provides percentage confidence ratings. It allows the user to click on the relevance icon next to an item, to return similar items (query by example). It also offers the user the option of retrieval by site, with sites listed hierarchically. Users should read the searching FAQs carefully to use the system to its fullest advantage. Excite also contains a browsable subject index in 14 major categories.
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HotBot
http://www.hotbot.com/
Provider: Inktomi and the HotWired Network
Browsable index: No
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: Robot, also takes human submissions
Selection of Resources/Who Selects?: No
Annotated: Yes, from the page itself
Notable features: Size of the index, speed of retrieval
FAQ: Yes, for the product and the searching system
HotBot indexes millions of documents on the web and Usenet news. Through a forms based interface, it allows Boolean AND/OR/NOT and phrase searching. In "open all" mode, it also supports field searching. Items are returned in order of relevance, which is provided on a percentage basis.
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Infoseek Ultraseek
http://www.infoseek.com/
Provider: Infoseek Corporation
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: Robot, also takes human submissions
Selection of Resources/Who Selects?: No, for the search engine. Yes, for the browsable index/Infoseek editors
Annotated: Yes, from the page itself, for the search engine. Yes, by Infoseek editors, for the browsable index.
Notable feature: Size of index, speed of retrieval
FAQ:
Yes for the product. Yes, for the searching system.
Ultraseek indexes the index full text of millions of pages. It supports Boolean
AND/OR/NOT and phrase searching, as well as field searching in 4 categories (link, site, url, and title). Items are returned in order of relevance, which is provided on a percentage basis. Infoseek also contains a browsable subject index in 13 major categories.
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Lycos
http://www.lycos.com/
Provider: Lycos, Inc.
Browsable index: Yes.
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: Robot, also takes human submissions
Selection of Resources/Who Selects?:No, for the search engine. Yes, for the two browsable indexes/Lycos editors.
Annotated: Yes, from the page itself, for the search engine. Yes, by Lycos editors, for the browsable indexes.
Notable feature: Size of index
FAQ: Yes, for the product and the searching system
Originally provided by Carnegie-Mellon University, this site is now maintained by Lycos, Inc. It supports Boolean AND/OR/NOT and truncation searching, relevance feedback, and allows the user to control the level and amount of feedback, as well as the level of relevance. It brings back annotation about the site from the page itself. Lycos also maintains two browsable subject indexes, the a2z Guide, and the well known Point Top 5% of all web sites directory.
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Open Text
http://index.opentext.net/
Provider: Open Text Corporation
Browsable index: No
Search capabilities:Yes
Item submission method: Robot, also take human submissions
Selection of Resources/Who Selects?: No/
Annotated: Yes, from the page itself
FAQ: Yes, for the product. Yes, for the searching system.
Provided by Open Text, this engine indexes every word of over a million Web pages. In addition to Boolean AND/OR/NOT searching, it supports phrase, proximity, and field searching, and returns relevance feedback.
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WebCrawler
http://www.webcrawler.com/
Provider: Excite, Inc.
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: Robot, also take human submissions
Selection of Resources/Who Selects?: No, for the search engine. Yes, for the browsable index/WebCrawler Eidtors.
Annotated: Yes, for the search engine, from the page itself. Yes, for the browsable index, by Webcrawler editors.
Notable feature: Quick and easy page locations
FAQ: Yes, for the product and the searching system
Originally provided by the University of Washington, then by America Online, this site is now maintained by Excite, Inc. It allows
phrase, Boolean AND/OR/NOT, and proximity searching. Relevance feedback is
available (if you select "Show Summaries"), as is a short summary taken from the page itself. It is a good basic searcher for a "quick and dirty" search. Webcrawler also contains a browsable subject index in 18 major categories.
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Meta-searchers:
MetaCrawler
http://www.metacrawler.com/
Provider: go2net, Inc.
Browsable index: No
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: None
Selection of Resources/Who Selects?: No, however MetaCrawler selects the search indexes to be used.
Annotated: Yes, from the page itself
Notable features:Searches multiple indexes simultaneously
FAQ: Yes, for the product and the searching system.
With a single search request MetaCrawler searches six search engines: AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, Webcrawler, and Yahoo. It supports Boolean AND/OR and phrase searching. MetaCrawler collects confidence scores from each of the search engines used, combines them, and provides the search results in order of relevance based on the combined confidence score. It does not, however, return individual confidence scores. MetaCrawler allows the user to focus the search by geographic region and by selected Internet domain type, e.g. "com," "edu," and "gov." It also allows the user to specify search time spent and number of results per source returned.
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SavvySearch
http://savvy.cs.colostate.edu:2000/
Provider: Daniel Dreilinger
Browsable index: No
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: None
Selection of Resources/Who Selects?: No, however SavvySearch selects the search indexes to be used
Annotated: Yes, from the page itself
Notable features: Queries over 20 search engines with one command. Groups results by sets of search engines. Context sensitive help is available. Query form is available in multiple languages.
FAQ:Yes, for the product. Yes, for the searching system. Context sensitive help is available by clicking on any blue box with an "i" in it.
SavvySearch allows the user to enter a single query to search over 20 search engines. (The list of engines can be found on the SavvySearch front page.) Search results can include Web sites, software, email addresses, and even movies. Boolean AND/OR and phrase searching are supported.Results are returned in a "search plan," with the best matches and their constituent search engines listed first. Alternatively, the user can request that the results be integrated into a single list of references, in which case duplicates are deleted and the constituent search engines are not specified. The user has some control of how many hits are gathered from each engine, as well as the amount of information displayed. The short searching FAQ should be read carefully in order to fully exploit the system
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search.com
http://www.search.com
Provider: c|net, inc.
Browsable index: Yes, of searching engines
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: None
Selection of Resources/Who Selects?: No, however search.com selects the search indexes to be used
Annotated: Yes, by search.com editors
Notable features: The number of search engines available. User can customize a page of favorite search engines. Brief annotations and searching tips for each search engine are provided.
FAQ:Yes, for the product. Yes, for the searching system. A Boolean searching primer is also provided.
Search.com provides the user with direct access to hundreds of search engines. The engines are organized into over 25 subject categories, allowing the user to narrow a search by selecting engines specializing in general topics such as art, science, health, news, sports, or entertainment. Each engine is accompanied by a short annotation, as well as one or two searching tips for that engine. The best engines, as determined by search.com, are indicated by a "top pick" icon. The search.com service allows the user to create a personalized page of useful engines that will appear for that user each time search.com initializes. Each subject heirarchy can be searched across selected search engines. The number of engines available, as well as the organization of the site, make it a valuable addition as an Internet searching tool.
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