General Search Engines/Web Guides

Search Engines allow for wide searching of the Internet.  There are no categories to select from.  Each web page has its own syntax for searching. Use the help screens for detailed instructions.   The basic syntax is "quotes" to find a phrase, plus ( + ) to include the words on the main page of the web site,  minus ( - ) to exclude it.

The basic Boolean operators - the way to combine terms are:

AND	Requires both terms or phrases to be present. Most of the search engines have this set as the default
OR	Requires either or both terms or phrases to be present.
NOT	Requires the term(s) or phrase(s) to be absent.

Promixity operators specify the relationship between the words.

ADJ	Words appear next to each other.
NEAR	Words are near each other. The number of words in between can be specified.
SAME	Words are usually in the same sentence or paragraph.
WITH	Same as SAME, words are usually in the same sentence or paragraph.

Web Guides provide a category-based format.  You select a topic of interest such as health and then continue to narrow the topic as the index becomes more specific. The topics are arranged in a tree like format starting with the trunk and moving out to the smaller limbs for more specific topics.

The lines have blurred between the search engines and the web guides with many providing both means of searching. Because each search engine/guide covers different web pages, it is useful to search using more than one engine.

For specific search help on Google and Altavista.

Google is a really nice search engine which also includes the ability to search for images on the web easily.

Selected Engines/Guides 

 

HotBot	http://www.hotbot.com/
Webcrawler	http://www.webcrawler.com/
AltaVista	http://altavista.com/
Google	http://www.google.com
Excite	http://www.excite.com/
GO.com	http://www.infoseek.com/
LookSmart	http://www.looksmart.com/
Lycos	http://www.lycos.com/
Search.com	http://www.search.com/
Yahoo	http://www.yahoo.com/
Librarian's Index to the Internet	http://lii.org/

 Selected MetaSearch Pages

Meta-Search Engines UC Berkeley - Teaching Library Internet Workshops

 

Dogpile	http://www.dogpile.com
Ixquick	http://www.ixquick.com/
Profusion	http://www.profusion.com/

Selected Medical Search Engines/Guides

 

Medical Matrix	http://www.medmatrix.org/Index.asp
HealthWeb	http://www.healthweb.org
Medsite	http://www.medsite.com/
Hardin Meta Directory	http://www.arcade.uiowa.edu/hardin-www/md.html
National Health Information Center	http://www.health.gov/nhic/
Netwellness	http://www.netwellness.org/

Domain Codes

Domain codes are one way to see what kind of page you have reached. There are country codes and the U.S. has codes for educational, commercial, military, etc. The following are websites listing the domain codes, the last two-three letters of the URL. If there is not a two letter code then the page is from the U.S.

http://www.december.com/html/spec/domcodes.html
http://www.norid.no/domreg.html

Created February 2002
Leslie M. Behm