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Here are a few of the resources you can use to
search the Internet. For more information on searching the
Internet, go to
Search Engine Watch. Among its Search Engine Listings are
specialty search engines and search engines for kids.
Search Engines
Google – has
different sites for different countries, for example
http://www.google.pt for
Portugal - you can find these and language translation tools
at
http://www.google.com/language_tools
MSN Search
Vivisimo –
analyzes search results and automatically sorts them into
categories
AllTheWeb.com
BrainBoost – Question Answering search engine
specifically designed to answer questions, asked in plain
English
Ask
Altavista
– US or international results, language translation
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Metasearch Engines
Freeality – Links to just about every kind of search you
can imagine
Search – searches a
variety of major search engines; has a page where you can
search by topic which use specialized search engines to
search the specific topic
Dogpile – includes
shopping, white pages, and yellow pages
Mamma – The Mother Of All Search Engines
Vivísimo – Organized Search Results with Document
Clustering
Kartoo – metasearch engine with visual display
interfaces
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Search Directories/Portals
Yahoo –
also different sites for different countries, for example
http://br.yahoo.com/ for
Brazil
Open Directory
About.com
Internet Public Library
INFOMINE – a virtual
library of Internet resources relevant to faculty, students,
and research staff at the university level.
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Vortals (portals for specific industries or topics)
-
List of
Lists "is a database of ranked listings of
companies, people and resources freely available on the
Internet"
CEO Express (my
favorite for business information)
BPubs.com – The Business Publications Search Engine
Daypop – a current events-weblog-news search engine
e-books
Australia – list of free e-books (different
countries/languages); site also includes lists to
purchase and information on creating ebooks
Doug Isenberg's
GigaLaw.com®: "Legal Information for Internet
Professionals"
FirstGov.gov is
the US government's portal to federal, state, local, and
tribal government websites
Good sources for finding vortals are
trade/professional associations, vendors, and universities
(pages for specific courses).
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How-to Information
Microsoft knowledge base (many vendors have these)
Online forums like
Google groups (formerly Usenet) or
Yahoo groups
Topica for
newsletter groups
About.com has information on
a wide range of topics
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News and Views
Daypop
will "search 59000 news sites, weblogs and RSS feeds for
current events and breaking news"
Newslink will connect you
to thousands of local media sources (US and international)
Newstrove lets you
search thousands of major news sites at once
USA Today for top US
stories
MagPortal lets you
search for articles in a long list of magazines
Google News for
overview of national and international news
BBC for international
news
Bloomberg for
business news (includes international sections)
CNET News for technology
news
Blogger for a
look at the increasingly popular blogs (web logs)
Example of a news blog is
NextDraft
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Business Intelligence
CEO Express is my
first stop for business information
PR Newswire is the
source for press releases
Biz Journals
besides business news they'll send you Email Alerts when
keywords (like company names) appear in stories
CorpTech provides
information on US high tech companies and executives
Fuld
Intelligence Toolbar
Dialog Profound and
DialogWeb are
subscription-based databases (sometimes, you get what you
pay for)
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People/Business Directories (USA)
http://www.infobel.com/teldir/ – links to directories
around the globe
Infospace – people,
businesses, public records, reverse lookup and more
411Locate – people,
businesses, shopping, reverse lookup and more
AnyWho – people
Super Pages –
businesses
International White and
Yellow Pages
Googlisms
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Reference and Research
BrainBoost – question answering search engine
specifically designed to answer questions, asked in plain
English
All Experts
Encyclopedia Britannica
Onelook
– a search engine for words and phrases
Dictionary
(has dictionaries for different language)
Reference tools
Librarians Index to
the Internet
Questia
– "the world's largest online library"
Internet Archive is
building a digital library of Internet sites and other
cultural artifacts in digital form
Academic Info –
educational subject directory, online degree programs, and
test preparation resources
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Miscellaneous Resources
http://web.archive.org – provides access to archived
versions of websites
http://www.virtualchase.com/ – "Teaching Legal
Professionals How To Do Research" - which also provides
great information for the rest of us like how to judge a
site's veracity, RSS feeds, and researching people
MSN Sandbox –
Microsoft provides various search resources including a
newsbot and toolbar
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Product Purchases
Froogle – find products for sale on the web
Consumer Reports
–
product reviews
Productopia – product
reviews
Bizrate
–
reviews and price comparisons
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Search Tools
Toolbars – these search tools install
themselves into Internet Explorer and provide a variety of
search features (including being added to the right-click
context menu).
Ask Jeeves –
http://sp.ask.com/docs/toolbar/
Google –
http://www.google.com/options/
MSN –
http://toolbar.msn.com/
Dogpile –
http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/tbar/
UCMore –
http://www.ucmore.com
Fuld
Intelligence Toolbar - for business competitive
intelligence
The Internet
Public Library has a
Searching
Tools button with some excellent resources, including
the ability to ask a librarian for help finding what you
need.
You have to love those librarians! Another
excellent site is the Library
& Information Technology Association (LITA). They have a
page called
Toolkit for the Expert Web Searcher that is loaded with
useful information and links.
Internet Explorer toolbar Research button
brings up the Research pane where you can look up words,
phrases, geographical locations, and more in the different
reference books.
Google's language tools –
http://www.google.com/language_tools – will let you set
your preferences to your preferred language. It will also
translate text and web pages.
Copernic Agent –
http://www.copernic.com/en/index.html – metasearch
engine with extra tools.
For a chart that lists search engines and
tips on how to best use them, go to
http://www.infopeople.org/search/chart.html.
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A few extra tips
You can use the plus (+) sign in front of
words to make sure they're included in a search. You can use
the minus (-) sign to exclude words. Rearranging the order
of words will change the results.
Sometimes the simplest way to find
something is to just type the keyword or phrase into the
address bar and add a .com (or .org) to it.
Google Advanced Search will let you search
just a domain name. This is helpful when a site has lots of
pages but no search function. You could also type the word "site:URL"
(without the quote marks and substituting the website for
URL) followed by your search term. For example:
site:www.triciasantos.com articles
Often when I'm searching I can wander far
and wide and lose track of where I started. If I think that
might happen, instead of clicking on a link I right-click on
it and choose Open in New Window.
Use the right tool for the job. Each area
of information is best found using different sources.
Find a few main sources that work and use
those. Experiment on occasion, but don't waste time trying
to find every possible result.
I don't think anything changes faster than
the web. While these links are good today, there's no
telling what the best resources will be tomorrow.
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