General
Search Engines and Search Directories List
We do not aim to list
every search engine or directory we can find but
rather the better known and more useful ones. Our
aim at Sapient
Search is to provide a site that is useful
to our visitors, rather than something like a library
or collection that has to be kept complete for its
own sake. Listings below are alphabetical, and each
opens in a new page.
AllTheWeb
AllTheWeb.com, owned by Overture with an index provided
by Yahoo, offers a clean-looking main page with
an unusual design amongst search engines. Offers
advanced search and customized preferences, and
through its use of the Yahoo index is able to include
billions of web pages and millions of PDF and MS
WordŽ files.
Altavista
Perhaps most well known these days for its BabelFish
machine-translation facility, but once arguably
one of the top four search engines in earlier days
of the Net, having originated in 1995 and having
provided the Web's first searchable, full-text database
of the World Wide Web, as it was then known. Nevertheless,
Altavista is still an important search engine, its
mountain view logo (suggestive of its California
location and Spanish-language name) gone and replaced
by a swirly red shape. Its main page is clean and
simple and easy to use. It is now owned by Overture,
in turn itself owned by Yahoo. Altavista also launched
the first online image, audio, and video search
facilities.
AOL
Search
The AOL Search Engine is effectively provided by
Google, though the version specifically for AOL
members at http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/webhome
also allows members to search AOL services. The
main page of each variation is very similar and
also very stylish looking, perhaps the coolest interface
of any search engine?
Ask.com
This used to be AskJeeves, a partly hand-edited,
part crawler-based search engine that worked by
having the user ask a question that was then either
answered or further refined by the search engine
asking further questions of the kind "Do you
mean..." This was a popular approach that brought
the site amongst the most used search engines. The
'Jeeves' part, a helpful English cartoon butler,
appears to have been phased out, the only remaining
references to him that we could find being at the
'Kids' version of Ask.com, namely AskForKids.com,
where it is announced that Jeeves is retiring after
ten years service, but is going on holiday first.
Ask.com is owned by IAC Search & Media and powered
by Teoma, with which it has now merged, ending the
separate web presence of Teoma.
ExactSeek
Long-standing search engine and directory that is
part of the Jayde Online Network. Offers a submit
your site facility. The main page is well-organised
but may appear a little crowded with links to some
eyes. Offer basic and advanced search. Free toolbar.
Claims to receive and index over 30,000 new site
submissions every day. 3 million web sites indexed
so far and aiming for 4 to 5 million. It also powers
other search engines, namely Aesop.com, OnSeek.com,
MaxPromo.com, SitesOnDisplay.com, MetaWebSearch.com
and Best-SearchEngine.com. ExactSeek's search algorithm
uses Alexa data in determining web site rankings
in its search results.
Excite
Excite.com's original logo has survived to the present
day where many have disappeared. Its current portal-style
main page is less smooth-looking than some, but
is certainly highly functional. It has many of the
features of the large search engines, such as a
customizable start page, web mail and country variations.
FyberSearch
A smaller search engine with a clean-looking, fairly
simple main page with sponsor ads and Google ads.
Add your URL facility. Begun in November 2003 by
one man, Nathan Enns, as his first programming project.
Google
Needing no introduction, Google has recently extended
its search portal to mainland China, though it is
not yet the most important search engine there.
It is the elegant simplicity of the main page, coupled
with unrivalled search technology that has led to
Google's domination of the search engine world.
Now you can even buy pens, bags and even a Google
computer mouse - from Google of course!
Hotbot
A long-standing search site offering you a choice
to search the web via AskJeeves or Google. The main
page offers a somewhat startling appearance in design
terms, at least to this reviewer's eye. At the time
of writing Hotbot does not seem to have caught up
with Ask.com dropping 'Jeeves'.
Lycos
Every popular search engine needs some sort of memorable
feature if it is to stick in people's minds and
bring them back to use the site. In the case of
Lycos it is a black labrador dog, who sets off to
retrieve the users request and bring it back. His
silhouette still sits dutifully beside the search
box at the main page. The main page is at the time
of writing also well organised and usable, if featuring
rather prominent advertising. Like Yahoo and others,
offers its own email.
The site also features
Lycos
Retriever, the "Web's first information
fusion engine", which apparently means that
it takes information from thousands of places about
a topic and puts this information together into
short, summaries, sort of like a ... well, an encyclopedia.
Searching for words such as 'ammonite' and 'primula'
gave the result that there were no results for these
words in Lycos Retriever, so this reviewer could
not say he had found the Retriever service innovative
or useful. The Lycos search engine itself if a different
matter though, of course.
MSN
Seen by most as the third most important search
engine after Google and Yahoo, the current style
sheet of its main page does not appear to be compatible
with some browsers (neither Netscape nor FireFox,
the two this reviewer is using) resulting in a very
'archaic' look without the use of tables to position
portions of the page correctly, or provide adequate
fonts. It actually says on the page "Why does
Search look like this? You are seeing this message
because our stylesheet is not compatible with your
browser." Wouldn't it be better to use a format
compatible with most or all browsers, as other leading
sites do?
OnSeek
A relatively minor search engine compared to many
on this page, OnSeek offers a fairly simple-looking
(where simplicity is seen as a virtue) main page
with a 'blocky' design. Submit your site facility
(which is part of the ExactSeek search network).
There is though little information at the site about
OnSeek itself, that we could find.
Open
Directory Project
The Open Directory Project, with its slightly odd
URL (http://dmoz.org/) is probably the most important
directory online today. Edited by human beings,
anyone with sufficient interest can become an editor
for a category, which clever system is why human-powered
listings have continued to thrive in this corner
of the Net at least. It compares itself to the Oxford
English Dictionary in terms of what this dictionary
has done for words, so the Open Directory Project
is doing for the Web.
Teoma
This was an important engine that powers other engines,
a crawler-based engine rather than being human-edited.
It has now merged with Ask.com, and the URL http://www.teoma.com
(and hence the link here) now redirects to Ask.com.
Yahoo
A legend on the Internet that needs little introduction.
Being the oldest web directory, Yahoo was for several
years the leading search site online until usurped
by relative newcomer Google, following a prolonged
'battle' in which both giants competed by introducing
ever new and more innovative services. During late
2005 a Yahoo spokesman memorably announced that
Yahoo could no longer compete on the same footing
as Google for search.
The Yahoo directory was
originally hand-edited by human beings, before spider
crawling took over; the hand-edited part of Yahoo
is still in use among the search listings. Yahoo
offers a 'balanced-looking' main page which is info-rich
with links but not overpowering. Search results
include sponsored results down the right hand side
of the page, as well as above and below the organic
search results, mainly distinguished in the latter
case by a differently-coloured background to these
parts of the page.
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