Some tools listed below are 'meta-index' tools, which list other tools. This page will be reorganized in the near future to provide separate listings of meta-index sites, search engines, and directories.
You can search multiple search engines at the same time -- a great tool! Reviewed in PC World Jan 96. The following comments are valid as of March 27, 1996:
The MetaCrawler is a free World Wide Web search service. The MetaCrawler differs from other services in that it doesn't maintain any internal database. Rather, it relies on the databases of Open Text, Lycos, and others. The MetaCrawler sends your queries to eight different services:
"A site of many pages featuring more than 460 search engines. I feel it's a writer's goldmine and get a good deal of mail from other writers who feel the same. Enjoy!" - From Teri Madden.
Victory adds: This site is very organized and has sections for:
Reviewed in PC World Jan 96. You can use different languages
in the search form: english, french, german, italian, portuguese,
spanish, dutch, norwegian, korean, russian, finnish, esperanto,
swedish, japanese, danish.
The following comments are valid
as of March 27, 1996: Searches these search engines:
DejaNews
SIFT
Inktomi
WebCrawler
excite
Yahoo
Infoseek
OpenText
Lycos
AltaVista
Galaxy
Pathfinder
AltaVistaNews
FTPSearch95
YellowPages
Aliweb
shareware.com
A really great search tool! If busy, try this Alternate site.
PC/Computing Magazine (Sept 1995, page 187) rated this the best search tool, over Lycos, WebCrawler, WWW Worm, and Yahoo: "The best of the bunch, but it isn't free.... Plenty of hits with unusually high accuracy... Interface, instructions, and customizability excellent throughout."
PC World Jan 96 says this engine has 400,000 indexed pages, and includes WWW, Usenet newsgroups, and other non-Internet databases.
This new search engine from Digital Equipment Corp. searches 21 million Web pages and 13,000 newsgroups and is becoming very popular.
If busy, try this Alternate site.
Has 5 million web pages in their catalog. PC/Computing rated this "One of the best free tools for searching the Web... High number of hits, and precision of results is usually excellent... Provides excellent descriptions of results."
PC World Jan 96 says this engine has 1.5 million indexed pages.
If busy, try this Alternate site.
PC/Computing Magazine rated this "Strong, and getting better all the time... Very high number of hits but too many slightly off topic... Excellent interface throughout and easy to use."
PC World Jan 96 says this engine has 190,000 indexed pages.
Victory says: Oliver McBryan's comprehensive search tool for the Web. Serving 3M URLs to 2M folks/month. Selected as "Best Navigational Aid category" in "Best of the Web '94".
PC/Computing Magazine rated this "One of the top Web-based search tools... Excellent quantity of hits and usually very high precision... Easy-to-understand front page with forms-based but limited customization."
PC World Jan 96 says this engine has 250,000 indexed pages.
General site used by over 6 million people every day. Has search tool for quick finding.
PC/Computing Magazine rated this "Always a useful place to start... Quantity and quality of results consitently good... Easy to use, but limited in search types."
From here you can go directly to dozens of search engines, sorted by type of search. Here is their list of different categories of search tools (my list as of Nov 24, 1995):
PC World Jan 96 says Exite has indexed pages WWW and Usenet newsgroups. Also runs WebCrawler and Magellan.
PC/Computing rated this "Good place for broad searching, but not for precision... Always a large number of hits but far too few directly on topic... If you like Archie, you'll like AliWeb."
PC World Jan 96 says this has 9,000 indexed pages.
PC/Computing Magazine rated this "Excellent starting point for Internet searching, but not multithreaded... Convenient to access several engines, but slow at retrieving information... Interface reflects unique elements of individual engines."
A directory.
New site uses 250 search engines.
Alternate site: CUSI at Internet Direct
From Sean Straw: "This is a search engine which in turn submits search requests to a number of other search engines (you choose which one). All sorts of searches. Not just web. People, files, Documents (like RFCs and draft standards), DICTIONARIES (ever wonder what "FUBAR" means? Check out the Hacker's Dictionary). This is one helluva useful link. Expect it to improve."
PC/Computing rated this "Good site to use to access individual engines... Results depend entirely on destination search tool; often slow processing... Easy to use, but little customizability and few advanced features."
Allows searching USENET articles -- A LOT of them.
Note from Sean Straw: "Try searching on the partial URL you have. There's a good chance it'll come up -- plus many URLs found in news articles are linked from the display, so you can just go there... This is an excellent search tool, since you can find things which in and of themseleves are not web resources, but passing conversations on the net."
PC/Computing rated this "Better for its subject catalog than its search abilities... Consistently high number of results, but unpredictable precision... Strong customization, but not intuitive."
From Sean Straw: "Topic sorted web site list with 'Search the Galaxy' feature. It lists 'frequent word' counts as well as brief descriptions. Useful resource which should be part of anyone's toolbox."
A place to find people. Are you registered? It's free.
A directory.
Search the contents of 45,000 World Wide Web home pages.
Offers software for searching.
PC/Computing Magazine, Sept 1995, rated this "A good start and often all you need... Time limit determines quantity and quality, with strong results... Good for searching multiple sites."
Has 'Online Research', 'Starting Point', 'References', and more.
A directory. Alternate web address
A directory.
PC World Jan 96 says this has 17,000 indexed pages.
Publishers of OnLine Column weekly ezine. Lists lots of search engines under 'W3 Search Engines'.
PC/Computing Magazine rated this "Continually improving; good for precise search strings... Results always plentiful but far too frequently off target... Easy-to-use interface and solid search capabilities."
PC World Jan 96 says this has 1.3 million indexed pages.
A directory.
A directory.
A directory.
From Sean Straw: "This is a nice site which offers links to various other search tools."
A directory.
A directory. Alternative site
A directory.
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