[Next] [Previous] [Top]

Search Engines

Searching

• There are a number of search engines around the Internet which can help find what you are looking for

• Web search engines use forms for queries

• Each tool has its own strengths and weaknesses

• The following URL gives a list and demo of the different search mechanisms one can use to find info on web
  • http://www.cityscape.co.uk/internet-access/index.html

Tools

• WWWW
  • WWWW (World Wide Web Worm) is a WWW Search Engine

  • WWWW allows you to locate almost any WWW hypertext or WWW information resource, simply by specifying some keywords.

  • WWWW provides four types of search databases: citation hypertext, citation addresses (URL), HTML titles and HTML addresses.

  • WWWW allows you to specify a limit for the number of matches you wish returned to you

  • WWWW -search http://www.cs.colorado.edu/home/mcbryan/WWWW.html

• Veronica
  • Veronica accepts simple keyword searches, or combinations of keywords

  • Veronica may return pointers to individual files held in gopherspace, or menu items.

• Lycos search
  • Searches document text

  • Ranked search results, with abstracts

  • Based on robot generated database

  • Very complete (2.69 million documents)

  • Frequently updated

  • Run by Carnegie Mellon University in the USA `it seems slow because you're sharing it with 174,999 other people'

  • Site http://query1.lycos.cs.cmu.edu/lycos-form.html

• A specialised index - Internet RFCs
  • Searches title, abstract, author

  • Selectable duplicate databases of Internet standards documents (Requests For Comments)

  • Provided by Martijn Koster at Nexor.

  • http://pubweb.nexor.co.uk/public/rfc/index/rfc.html

• CUI
  • The CUI (Centre Universitaire d'Informatiqu) Web Catalog.

  • The CUI server is a catalogue of pages available on the World Wide Web.

• A (UK) search engine -JumpStation II
  • Search by title, header or subject

  • Based on robot generated database

  • Fairly small database

  • Run by Jonathon Fletcher at Stirling University

  • http://js.stir.ac.uk/jsbin/jsii

• A list searcher -W3 Catalog
  • Searches nine large, frequently updated lists, including:
    • NCSA What's new

    • CERN's W3 Virtual Library Subject Catalog

    • Martijn Koster's Aliweb Archie-like Indexing for the Web

    • Scott Yanoff's Internet Services List

  • Run by Centre Universitaire d'Informatique, University of Geneva

  • http://cuiwww.unige.ch/cgi-bin/w3catalog
    • A multi-threaded search

    • Generates queries to many search engines

    • Presents results as one document

    • User-selectable searching time

    • http://www.sun.fi/mtq/mtquery.html