Search Engines

It is not always easy to determine if information on the web is credible. However, using these guidelines can help.

• Google indexes an amazing 200 million web pages, using 3,000 computers. Google has become very popular with those who prefer speed and simplicity, and so far - no ads!
  

Google Scholar

• Google Scholar lets you search "specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research."

Google Local (beta)

• Google Local helps you focus your search on a specific geographic location. For now, Google Local only searches for locations in the United States and Canada.

AllTheWeb

• Second only to Google in size.  Unified search where web pages, files and multimedia content are all available in one place

Ask Jeeves

• Just Ask Jeeves a question...although sometimes the "intelligent" answers don't make sense.

Yahoo

• Yahoo approaches the Web through over a dozen major categories, and remains the main access for users who prefer a guided approach to web searching. Yahoo is the #1 visited place on the entire Internet.

Librarian's Index to the Internet

• A searchable and annotated subject directory of more than 10,000 Internet resources, selected and evaluated by librarians.

For more choices, see the list at Search Engine Watch.

Search Tips

To optimize search results, skim through the search tips provided by your search engine of choice as they vary from engine to engine. In general, the following tips work for many search engines, library databases, and the library catalog:

• Use "quotation marks" to search for exact phrases.
• Use the truncation symbol * to pick up variant endings of a word. For example, searching for econom* will find "economy", "economics", economical"
• Use boolean, proximity, and adjacency operators to broaden and narrow your search.
  
  

  AND	Find all the words. Example: paris AND london
  AND NOT	Find articles which have the first word, but not the second word. Example: paris AND NOT hilton
  OR	Find any of the words. Example: paris OR france
  WITHIN	Find articles where the first word appears some number of words before or after the second word. Example: paris W/3 cheese