Web Indexes

March 2010

For developments in search, try visiting [theNextWeb.com/search]. That's the home of the former 100 top alternative search engines. A list of some favorite search engines, updated April 2007:

Web references

These might be taken as commented directories, which is a little different than a search engine, but these are powerful enough to be worth a visit before doing a general search of the web:

• [About.com].
• [findHow.com]. This one is rather new to me. I like it quite a lot. It's like having a library of how to books on every subject. It may give about.com a run for their money.
• [Wikipedia.org].

Web text indexes

The list excludes pay for placement engines such as LookSmart and WiseNut, which is based on it. In some sense, these feel more like yellow pages to me, which is not to say they are not useful, but it's not what I expect in a web search.

• These experimental search engines are powered by Nutch, the open crawler: [www.acrosscan.com] [www.mozdex.com].
• [Ask.com]. Also powers [Lycos.com].
• [Alexa.com]. Also provides the feed for the [wayback machine] (www.archive.org).
• [Bing]. Previously known as live.com, previously known as MSN.com.
• [Devilfinder.com]. OK, not a favorite; searches often fail with a lot of computer errors.
• [Entireweb.com].
• [GigaBlast.com]. You can be listed as quickly as 30 minutes after submission, but submission is not always available.
• [Google]. Now updates more or less continuously; but submissions may first show up in the supplemental index and may take considerable time to enter the main index.
• [www.snap.com]. A different presentation, with big, up to date thumbshots of many sites.
• [Search.Yahoo.com]. Also powers [Alltheweb.com]; and [Altavista.com]. The simple Yahoo.com no longer works. What can they possibly be thinking?

Expanding a search with clustering

• Quintura.com.
• www.Powerset.com. Only searches Wikipedia, but useful.

Kartoo is excluded because it does not work without Shockwave Flash.

Expanding a search with 'meta' indexes

• [DogPile]. Searches Ask.com, google.com, msn.com, yahoo.com. Images from Yahoo, Ditto, and more.
• [Excite.com]. Searches Ask.com, google.com, yahoo.com. Images largely from Yahoo.
• [Metacrawler]. Searches Ask.com, google.com, msn.com, yahoo.com. Images largely from Yahoo.
• [Search]. Searches Ask.com, google.com. Images from Ask.com.
• [Webcrawler.com]. Searches Ask.com, google.com, msn.com, yahoo.com. Images largely from Yahoo.

Web image indexes

In 2007, there are really only four significant providers: Ask, Google, PicSearch, and Yahoo!. I suspect the others listed without affiliation probably draw on the indexes of one or more of the big four:

• [www.ask.com/pictures]. Also powers: [www.lycos.com] image search.
• [images.devilfinder.com. Presents images in pretty large size.
• [images.google.com]. Also powers: [search.aol.com/aolcom/imagehome].
• [www.netvue.com]. The plus side is it downloads image matches and presents them as a slide show. The down side is this is quite slow, particularly on dialup.
• [www.picsearch.com]. Also powers: [bing.com/images/].
• [images.search.yahoo.com]. Also powers: [www.alltheweb.com/?cat=img]; and [www.altavista.com/image/].