MAJOR SEARCH ENGINES

Competition is fierce among the major search engines. The following are the leaders at this particular time. No one search engine indexes the entire World Wide Web. No two search engines retrieve identical results. For important comprehensive searches, it is essential to access more than one of these navigational tools.

QUICK JUMP: Alta Vista | Excite! | HotBot | InfoSeek | Lycos | Northern Light | WebCrawler

• Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.digital.com/ ): A prominent leader in this race to index the Web. Large, fast, good search features. A favorite of many--and deservedly so. Advanced search feature: Advanced Search
  

• Excite! (http://www.excite.com/ ): A large database that provides concept searching along with keyword capability. For similar or related sources, choose the "more like this" feature. Sort by relevance or by site. Advanced search feature: Power Search
  

• HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com/): Now considered No. 1 by some, HotBot has risen quickly to the top. Has impressive features, such as being able to search by by page title, person, and media type as well as limit by date. Advanced search feature: SuperSearch
  

• InfoSeek (http://www.infoseek.com/): A heavily used, popular tool. In addition to the WWW, InfoSeek can also search Companies, News, Usenet, Maps.
  

• Lycos, Inc. (http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu/): One of the oldest search engines still in the hunt. Has specialized information and finding tools, e.g., Companies On-line, Pictures and Sounds, City Guides, Road Maps. Advanced search feature: Lycos Pro with Power Panel.
  

• Northern Light (http://www.northernlight.com/) The newest major search engine with an added difference. Searches not only WWW but also a special collection of approximately 1800 publications, including some scholarly journals. To view full-text articles from special collection, one must pay $1-$4 per article; many seem to be $1. Results of searches are categorized in custom search folders.

• WebCrawler (http://webcrawler.com/ ): Formerly America Online's search engine, this smaller database remains a popular choice.
  

Compiled 1/31/97 (Updated 12/05/97) by Laura Boyer (CSU Stanislaus, Reference Coordinator); technical assistance by Valerie Bross (CSU Stanislaus,