If you would like to search the Web, we offer you access to some of the most popular search engines. Below that, we have an Annotated Alphabetical List of useful search engines. Happy browsing!

A2Z A search tool from the Lycos family, A2Z starts with the sites that are most frequently linked to, and then provides concise descriptions of these sites. The user can either search or browse the summaries within categories.

ALIWEB ALIWEB is an index of registered pages, so the universe it searches is somewhat limited (in other words, not the whole Web). However, the searching is done on page summaries that are submitted by the author at the time of registration and tend to be quite accurate.

All-in-One Search Page All-in-One offers an interface to multiple indices and search engines on one page. The search engines are well organized in an easy to use format. This site can take a while to load, so you may want to turn off image loading.

Alta Vista Digital Equipment Corporation's Alta Vista indexes the full text of Web pages and newsgroups. It claims to have the largest index available and offers both simple and advanced queries, with a choice of output formats.

Amazing Environmental Organization Web directory! A more specialized search tool, this Web directory offers access to all kinds of environmental information on the Web.

Argus/University of Michigan Clearinghouse Provides access to topical, value added guides to the Internet. The guides are both searchable and browsable and are given a rating. The Internet Searching Center option allows a multiple database search.

C/NET Search.com This "all-in-one" site allows access to more than 250 Internet search engines, arranged and ranked within categories.

The Electric Library The Electric Library offers full text access to newspapers, magazines, reference books, etc. Searches can be composed in plain English. There is a monthly subscription charge for this service, but they do offer a 2 week free trial.

Excite Excite's index is deep, broad, and current. Excite offers full text searching capability, made more powerful by concept and keyword searches. Presents results with a detailed summary to allow a quicker selection of appropriate sites for information,

Galaxy Galaxy presents hierarchies of subject categories, full text and link text searches, retrieval of "any" or "all" search terms, and choice of length of output. Includes access to Telnet and Gopher sites, as well as the Web.

GNN Select GNN selects, reviews, and categorizes the "best sites the Internet has to offer."

InfoSearch InfoSearch offers access to technical information services with an easy to use interface.

InfoSeek Guide InfoSeek indexes full text of Web pages and endeavors to be selective in the pages it indexes so as to reduce the number of irrelevant pages retrieved. Search results are ranked according to relevance and case sensitive recognition is offered.

HotBot HotBot exploits NOW (network of workstations) parallel computing technology developed by Inktomi Corporation to achieve scalable supercomputer-class performance from clusters of reliable commodity workstations and high-speed local-area networks.They claim that this technology allows them to download over 10 million Web pages a day, from around the world.

The Internet Sleuth The Internet Sleuth offers a wide variety of specialized searches by category, including a quick keyword search.

Lycos One of the largest and most popular, Lycos indexes Web pages, Web page titles, headings, subheadings, URLs, significant text, and keywords. Lycos returns search results in ranked order and tends to be both fast and flexible. The display of search results can be confusing at times, but the manner of display of the results can be changed.

Magellan McKinley's Magellan search engine will return results from its index of rated sites and will also return unrated sites from the Web at large. The results are returned in descending rank order.

MetaCrawler  MetaCrawler is a multi-threaded Web search service, which means that it offers the ability to search nine databases at once. The searcher does have the ability to define some search parameters, and the results are verified and collated.

NlightN NlightN claims it searches "all information sources" simultaneously, but no real definition of these sources is given. Results are returned with name, title, and brief sample of text. A fee is required to get the full text of the documents, but enough information is provided to make the choices fairly safe.

Open Text Index The Open Text Index searches the full text of every Web page the company has indexed. It offers sophisticated search capabilities, such as the ability to search only titles or links, or the choice between a Simple Search, a Power Search, or a Weighted Search. Users may also view their search terms in context and find ones similar to the ones that they like best.

Point Another member of the Lycos family, Point's database is comprised of the Web sites that their editors have chosen as the top 5% of the Web. A description and review of each Web site is given in the results.

Savvy Search SavvySearch queries multiple search engines simultaneously. Because one interface is used for several search tools, certain special search features at some sites can not be used. Users can specify the sources and types of information received, but the search tends to be slower than searching indices or engines individually.

Starting Point Starting Point's meta search allows the user to search the "most extensive databases on the Web." Offers the ability to do a key word search or to browse categories.

WebCrawler Originally developed at the University of Washington and now owned by America Online, WebCrawler allows full text document title and content searches. Searches tend to return relevant results more often, and these results are returned in order of decreasing relevance in an unannotated, easy-to-browse list. WebCrawler is very fast and is excellent for quick searching for a top level Web page.

WhoWhere? WhoWhere claims it is the only free online email directory. Locates people and organizations on the Net, and allows searches by initials and also handles misspellings.

World Wide Arts Resources World Wide Arts Resources is a comprehensive registry of worldwide visual arts information. The keyword search is case sensitive.

W3 Search Engines This page from the University of Geneva provides access to most of the Web search engines, to Gopher and Veronica searches, and to searches for software, people, publications, news, etc.

Yahoo! Originally developed at Stanford and now run as an independent company, Yahoo's hierarchical subject orientated collection is divided into broad categories and offers the ability to search or browse. Yahoo was one of the first and is still one of the most widely used engines, offering various searching functions.

Yahooligans!  Yahooligans! is Yahoo's offering for the younger Web surfer;
a yahooligan is identified as someone between the ages of 8 and 14. The interface is similar to Yahoo.