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WWW Virtual Library --- Advanced browsing ---- Search

Resources to search over the Internet.

Broader categories :

WWW Virtual Library --- Advanced Browsing

Contents:

Vertical search - Deep web - Selection of information - Advanced search - Periodic search - Meta search - Other people search for you - Sustainable search - Auto-completion - Visual search - Real-time search.

Starred entries are especially recommended.

New entries are added periodically.

Vertical search

search engines specific to topics as diverse as health and engineering.

Providers of vertical search tools

Google Co-op: This service allows users to create customized search engines that are tailored to their interests. Users can pick which Web sites are included in the index or display those pages higher in the results.
Rollyo: Create search engines using the sources you trust.
creating a quality CSE: Interesting tips about Custom Search Engines.

Vertical search engines

A good way to avoid spam and homonyms, but results may also potentially be more biased (in case of politicised subjects)...

Seekos: Seekos restricts search to the 5,000 most visited sites online to avoid spam regardless of the search request.
JumpUp: Selecting Top Business Resources in JumpUp search box will trigger their vertical search service for business creation.
MacWorld: Searches related to the Mac world.
RealClimate: Climate science from climate scientists.

Geographical search

Europeword: Most popular websites in Europe.
USA net directory: Collection of quality American websites.

The Deep Web

Content that resides in searchable databases, out of reach from standard search engines...

Complete Planet: Search over 70,000+ databases and specialty search engines.
Deep Web White Paper: Article about the Deep Web.
Deep Web blog: Monitoring deep web research resources and sites on the Internet.
Deep Web search tools: Search engines, resources, articles...
How to Search the Invisible Web: Guide to searching the invisible web, including open access journal databases, invisible web search engines and subject-specific databases.

Selection of information

Yahoo:

Mindset sorts search results for your query into commercial or non-commercial (informational) results, based on whether you're shopping or seeking information.
People search searches the adress, the phone or the email of people.
Desktop search supports over 300 file types.

Google:

PageRank uses the web's vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value (check the page rank of sites or even install a specific toolbar on most browsers). See also this list of resources about PageRank.
Desktop search browse and search information on your PC as if it were on the Web.
Book search to search the full text of books.
Scholar searches scholarly papers.
Advanced search special features: search including synonyms or find pages that link to your page.

TagCloud

Searches any number of RSS feeds you specify, extracts keywords from the contents and lists them according to prevalence within the RSS feeds.

SearchEngineWatch

Good source of news on Web and RSS search.

SearchEngineWatch

Good source of news on Web and RSS search.

Similar site search

Provides a list of sites similar to one you specify. Can be useful to look for competing commercial sites when one attracted your attention.

Search engine advanced searches

In case you got too many results from your search and need to filter more... - In construction!

The following search engines have been surveyed so far: Google - Ask Jeeves - msn - altavista - Yahoo

Search limited to pictures.: Google - Ask Jeeves - msn - altavista - Yahoo
Search limited to TV programs/videos/movies.: Google - msn - altavista - Yahoo
Search limited to audio/music.: msn - altavista - Yahoo
Search limited to newsgroups.: Google -
Search limited to news.: Google - Ask Jeeves - msn - altavista - Yahoo (includes blogs)
Search limited to blogs.: Google -
Search limited to region/country.: Google - Ask Jeeves - msn - Yahoo
Search limited to products/shopping.: Google - Ask Jeeves - msn - Yahoo
Search can be expressed with boolean terms (AND, OR...).: Google (limited) - Ask Jeeves - altavista (real boolean expression!) - Yahoo
Search limited to pages written in specific languages.: Google - msn - altavista (limited) - Yahoo
Search limited to files in specific formats (PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT...).: Google - altavista - Yahoo
Search limited to documents updated at specific date ranges.: Google (limited) - Ask Jeeves - altavista - Yahoo (limited)
Search limited to specific areas/HTML tags of the document (only in the title, only in the URL...): Google - Ask Jeeves
Search limited to the links to the page (chirurgical precision!): Google (select "in links to the page" in "Occurences") -
Search limited to domains (.edu, vlib.org...): Google - Ask Jeeves - msn - altavista - Yahoo
Search within two numbers (Ray Charles 1950..1960 , 40..50 kg girlfriend ...): Google -
Search limited to documents with specific usage rights (free to use or share, free to modify...): Google - Yahoo
Search excluding offensive material: Google - altavista (optional password protection) - Yahoo
Personalize ranking order: msn
Site collapse: altavista can show either a maximum of two results per site, or all results from the same site.

Periodic search

Google's alerts: Periodic emails about new results to your search.
Yahoo's alerts: Alerts sent by Yahoo's email, messenger or your mobile.

Meta search

Who cares which search engine is the best ? Search them all!

MetaCrawler: Displays combined results from top search engines, as well as individual search results from each search engine, as well as suggestions to refine the search.
Dogpile: Displays combined results from top search engines, as well as individual search results from each search engine.
kosmix: buils a guide/magazine related to a keyword you entered by combining various multimedia sources.
Wolfram Alpha: Attempts to provide a guide to your keyword by combining various sources and making sense out of them. Doesn't work for every keyword.
AnkaSearch: Downloadable software that fetches and aggregates results from lots of search engines.
Gokuki: Manual meta search engine in Spanish.
DuckDuckGo: uses information from crowd-sourced sites with the aim of augmenting traditional results and improving relevance.

Other people search for you

Ask someone to search for you.

Google's answers: 500 researchers will help you - for a fee.
Yahoo's answers: Free service
Ask me help desk: Ask your question on almost any subject (you must select the topic first) and get answers for free - or for money. Experts answering your questions get a share of the site's advertising revenue.
Twine: Twine lets you store your searches and benefit from the searches of others. Between search engine and social network.
hakia: hakia searches results within sites selected by librarians.
King.info: User generated search engine. The results, descriptions for results and search terms are added/changed by the users. There are not many entries added at this stage (nov09) as it has just been launched, but you can try for example: search engine, auctions, blogging or images.
Quora: Good quality conversation, especially about geeky questions.

Sustainable search

Search and feel good about it.

VeoSearch: Search engine financing projects towards sustainable development (social work, environment protection or sustainable economics). Every search generates advertisement revenues, 50 % of which are distributed to charities.

Auto-completion

Google suggest: Tries to complete a search request by adding related words.

Visual search

searchme: Presents web sites and multimedia information with an ITunes-like interface.
Deeperweb: Navigate through search results with TagCloud techniques. You can also map information results into categories.

Real-time search

Scoopler: Searches blogs, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious and other services and updates the results in real-time.
oneriot: crawls the links people share on Twitter, Digg and other social sharing services, then indexes the content on those pages.
Tweetmeme: Tweetmeme tracks the most popular links on Twitter every five minutes.