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Top 10 Search Engines on the Internet
The following Search Engines/Directories
are listed in order of Popularity as at February 2001 by Media
Metrix. They are all either well-known or well-used. For searchers,
these well-known, commercially-backed search engines generally mean
more dependable results. These search engines are more likely to be
well-maintained and upgraded when necessary, to keep pace with the growing
web.
For Other Search Engines on the web, visit the Search
Engine Colossus; the International Directory of Search Engines on
the Internet or try the Search
Engine Glossary , An A-Z Glossary of Search Terminology for the
more technically challenged.
Yahoo
Yahoo is the web's most popular search service. It is the largest human-compiled
guide to the web, employing about 150 editors in an effort to categorise
the web. Yahoo has well over 1 million sites listed. Yahoo also supplements
its results with those from Google. If a search fails to find a match
within Yahoo's own listings, then matches from Google are displayed.
Google matches also appear after all Yahoo matches have first been shown.
Yahoo is the oldest major web site directory, having launched in late
1994.
MSN Search
Microsoft's MSN Search service is a LookSmart-powered directory of web
sites, with secondary results that come from Inktomi. RealNames and
Direct Hit data is also made available.
AOL Search
The Open Directory Project features about three million sites on AOL
and the rest of the Web. Sites are selected, reviewed and organized
by tens of thousands of subject experts and if those sources don't contain
what you requested, AOL Search searches the full text of over 150 million
pages.
Lycos
Lycos started out as a search engine, depending on listings that came
from spidering the web. In April 1999, it shifted to a directory model
similar to Yahoo. When you search on Lycos, you will often see a list
of Categories and Web Sites. Links to Categories will appear when your
search term matches a word in the name of a category in the Open Directory.
Links to Web Sites indicate that your search term appears in the title
or description of an Open Directory listing.
Google
Google is a search engine that makes heavy use of link popularity as
a primary way to rank web sites. The system works so well that Google
has gained wide-spread praise for its high relevancy. Google also has
a huge index of the web and provides some results to Yahoo and Netscape
Search.
Netscape Search
Netscape Search's results come primarily from the Open Directory and
Netscape's own "Smart Browsing" database. Secondary results
come from Google. At the Netscape Netcenter portal site, other search
engines are also featured.
Excite
Excite offers a medium-sized crawler-based web page index, as well as
access to human-powered directory results from LookSmart. Excite was
launched in late 1995. It grew quickly in prominence and consumed two
of its competitors, Magellan in July 1996, and WebCrawler in November
1996. Magellan was discontinued in April 2001. WebCrawler continues
to operate as a separate service, but it provides the same results at
the Excite.com site itself.
Ask
Jeeves
Users pose questions in plain English and receive links to Web sites
containing relevant information, services and products. Ask Jeeves'
combination of natural language question answering, human editorial
judgment and popularity technology gives users the benefit of millions
of previous searches.
AltaVista
AltaVista is consistently one of the largest search engines on the web,
in terms of pages indexed. Its comprehensive coverage and wide range
of power searching commands makes it a particular favorite among researchers.
In addition to crawler-based web page matches, it also offers news search,
shopping search, multimedia search and human-powered directory results
from LookSmart (see below). AltaVista opened in December 1995.
LookSmart
LookSmart is a human-compiled directory of web sites. In addition to
being a stand-alone service, LookSmart provides directory results to
MSN Search, Excite and many other partners. Inktomi provides LookSmart
with search results when a search fails to find a match from among LookSmart's
reviews. LookSmart launched independently in October 1996.
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