AKC Logo

Introduction to Search Engines

The Internet has tens of millions of sites at this point; growth is exponential and bibliographic control does not exist. To find the proverbial needle in this immense haystack (or tiny fly in the Web), you may use two basic approaches: a search engine or a subject guide such as Yahoo, Snap, LookSmart, and Magellan. Subject guides are fine for browsing general topics, but for specific information use a search engine.

All search engines do keyword searches against a database, but various factors influence the results from each. Size of the database, frequency of update, search capability and design, and speed may lead to amazingly different results. Recent addition of new content, redesign and partnership changes have fulfilled the mission of the new name: portals. This name implies a starting point and central location for all uses of the Web. We prepared these documents to help users understand the differences between some of the most popular search engines.

There are also metasearch sites or metacrawlers that send searches to several search engines. Since metasearch engines do not allow for input of many search variables, their best use is to find hits on obscure items or to see if something is on the Internet. Some of the best-known ones are Dogpile, Inference Find, Mamma, Metacrawler, and SavvySearch.