Also known as 'All the Web', FAST has always intended to index as much of the web as possible. It has a consistently large index and was the first search engine to break the 200 million results mark. The interface is slick and the results get passed back to you nice and quickly.
AltaVista used to be one of the most popular search engines on the web, due to a consistently large index and many advanced tool for searchers (page translation for example, which is a good service). It went through a turbulent time, with its management apparently unsure whether it was a portal site or a no-nonsense search engine. It has now settled on being a dedicated search engine, but doesn't look so hot and has been losing users for ages. AltaVista makes its own listings and supplements them with sites from the Open Directory, Ask Jeeves and Looksmart.
AOL Search allows its members to search both the web and AOL's own content. External category and site listings come from the Open Directory and crawler-based results come from Inktomi.
This smart engine launched in '97. Instead of a user entering keywords into the form, this engine returns web pages based on a question asked by the user to the titular Jeeves. Adding a face to the search engine experience may be a gimmick, but it's a clever one and has made Jeeves a popular choice with new web users.
Dogpile is a useful search engine because the results you see are actually search results it gets from other search engines and then collects and collates together into one report.
Anyone remember the Excite TV ad where the guy smashes his car window? That was great. Anyway, Excite is one of the more popular search sites on the net with a wide range of services and a large index. It takes ages to get listed. I'm talking multiple months.
Google quickly became the most used search engine on the web due to its accurate results and a massive index (over 1 billion pages). The results are highly relevant because of Google's sophisticated ranking algorithm, which factors in how many links a page has pointing towards it, which should mean that they've been found by others to be good resources. Another great thing about Google is that it is designed for all-out speed. Your results appear within a second and the site's focus never wanes towards being a portal or any of that rubbish. Google results are used by Yahoo and Netscape. Google is easily the most important search engine to get
listed in.
Digg is a technology news website that employs non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allowing an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.
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To get a good listing in GoTo, you have to pay, which is becoming an increasingly popular way for the search engines to make money. It seems to be a cost-effective promotion method too. Other non-paid results are taken from Inktomi. The paid results also show up in other engines like AltaVista, AOL Search, Lycos, HotBot and Netscape Search.
Owned by Wired Digital (of WebMonkey fame), HotBot is another search engine that used to be popular. Many of its results come from Direct Hit, and the rest from Inktomi, with directory information coming from the Open Directory.
Along with Looksmart's own directory service, it provides results to MSN Search, Excite and others. Inktomi gives Looksmart results if nothing is found in its own database. Looksmart isn't hugely popular, but is still a player.
Lycos started as a spider-based engine but in '99 changed to a directory, getting listings from the Open Directory, with secondary results coming from FAST and Direct Hit. Lycos owns HotBot, but continues that service independently. Lycos is used by a decent amount of people.
Microsoft's MSN Search is part of its popular MSN portal site. It is a Looksmart powered directory, with secondary results from Inktomi. Internet Explorer's integrated search toolbar uses this index as its default.
Direct Hit refers to itself as a 'popularity engine', because it bases its ranking system on the amount of visitors a site gets through its results pages. This engine is owned by Ask Jeeves and partnered with HotBot and MSN search .
Yahoo is the most famous site on the Internet. It is the largest human-compiled directory in existence, and now has over 1 million sites indexed (including our good selves). As well as its own index of sites, Yahoo search results pages also include webpages from a search engine's index. In mid-2000 Google started providing these webpage results (taking over from Inktomi). Yahoo is now the oldest major directory, having been around since 1994, close to the beginning of the web itself.
Wikipedia
Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has rapidly grown into the largest reference website on the Internet. The content of Wikipedia is free, written collaboratively by people from all around the world. This website is a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit, correct, or improve information throughout the encyclopedia, simply by clicking the edit this page link (with a few minor exceptions, such as protected articles and the main page).
Merriam-Webster Online
The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary is based on the print version of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. The online dictionary includes the main A-Z listing of the Collegiate Dictionary, as well as the Abbreviations, Foreign Words and Phrases, Biographical Names, and Geographical Names sections of that book. It also includes 1,000 illustrations and 25 tables. Selected sections of the print Collegiate Dictionary, notably the Signs and Symbols section, are omitted from the online Collegiate Dictionary because they include special characters and symbols that cannot readily be reproduced in HTML. |
