Search Engines
Which One Should I Use?

Search Engines are the World Wide Web's equivalent of a library catalog. However, because of the enormous size of the Web, no search engine includes everything that is on the Web. Just as there are different ways to search for a book in the library, there are different ways to locate resources on the internet.

Online Safety - Before you start surfing check out ways that you can protect your family and yourself.

DCLS Recommended Websites

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Directory search engines such as Yahoo! or about.com allow you to look for a topic by standardized words that describe what you're looking for, such as 'taxes' or 'recipes.' A site's inclusion under the topic you are searching for is determined by a person, not an automated process. As such, your results are fewer but more pertinent.
 

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Full-text search engines such as AltaVista, Infoseek and Google are a little more difficult to work with. Every occurrence of the word that the search engine has found is listed, regardless of context. More words must be added to narrow the search. If you type in only the word 'pumpkin' when you are looking for information on growing pumpkins, you will also retrieve fairy tales, holidays, rock groups, recipes and paint colors. AltaVista and Infoseek allow you to search for a phrase by putting the words in quotation marks, and to include or exclude words by adding a + or - . So, a search of +"pumpkin pie" +maple -walnuts would find only pages that include both the phrase and the additional word and not include hits that have the word walnuts.
 

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MetaSearch engines such as Dogpile search the contents of other search engines and organize them for you. Ask Jeeves does this as well, but allows you to phrase the search in the form of a question. They can produce excessively large results if your query is not specific enough.
 

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Specialized Search Engines/Databases such as Internet Movie Database or Thomas (which searches pending Federal legislation) are designed to cover one specific topic and to cover it thoroughly. Smaller, specialized tools are available which search a topic, a region or in a specific language can be found on Yahoo.