» Home > Research >

Search the Web

On this page

• Search the web booklets
• Search engines
• Meta search engines
• Specialist search engines
• Academic and professional directories
• General and commercial directories
• Invisible web gateways

Related information

• Off-campus access to Google Scholar

Search the web booklets and guides

• Google Searching (633K in PDF format)
• Google Scholar: tips and tricks (786K in PDF format)
• How to evaluate websites (213K in PDF format)
• Why not Wikipedia? (367K in PDF format)

^ Top of page

Search engines

Use search engines to find information or sites on the web.

- also offers image searching, groups, translation tools and more.

• Ask.com - offers multiple specialised search tools.
• Exalead - offers some unique features and options for limits.
• Factbites - different presentation of results - 3 relevant sentences are shown from each site in your search results list.
• Gigablast - offers options to narrow your search.
• Live Search - Microsoft Web search engine, also known as Live.com.
• Microsoft Academic Search - Find information about academic papers, authors, conferences, journals, and organizations from multiple sources.
• Yahoo! - separate search interface to the Yahoo! subject directory.

^ Top of page

Meta search engines

Meta search engines transmit your search simultaneously to several individual search engines.

• Dogpile - searches Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, About, LookSmart, Teoma, Overture, FindWhat.
• Mamma.com - extensive web search on latest news and updates, images, videos and twitter.
• Metacrawler - searches Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, About, LookSmart, Teoma, Overture, FindWhat and more.
• Pandia Search - includes Yahoo, AltaVista, the Open Directory, AlltheWeb and more.
• Yippy - searches several search engines, combining similar results together into clusters.

^ Top of page

Specialist search engines

Some search engines have a specific focus.

• Anzwers - Australian & New Zealand emphasis
• Artcyclopedia - Fine arts search engine. Comprehensive and effective guide to fine art on the Internet with an excellent links page
• DigitalNZ - a search engine that brings together NZ digital content from a range of content providers
• Picsearch - search engine for pictures and images
• Scitopia - over 3 million documents, plus patents and government data
• Wayback Machine - Internet Archive - locates archived versions of stored websites.

^ Top of page

Academic and professional directories

Directories are sets of web pages grouped by subject and listed in an organised way.

• Academic Info - focus on academic sites.
• Biz/Ed - business education on the Internet - business and economics related subjects for students and educators.
• INFOMINE - (Scholarly Internet Resource Collections) 120,000+ scholarly resources arranged over a broad range of subjects.
• intute - provides access to high quality internet resources, chosen and evaluated by subject specialists from a network of UK universities.
• Te Puna Web Directory (NZ and Pacific) -a directory to New Zealand & Pacific Island web sites.
• Virtual Reference Shelf - selected web resources compiled by the Library of Congress.

^ Top of page

General and commercial directories

• About.com - educational subject directory with an academic focus covering thousands of topics, including Invisible Web.
• Refdesk - an index to current quality Internet reference sources and sites.
• PIPERS New Zealand pages - an index to several thousand NZ sites organised by subject categories.
• Search Engine Watch - search tips and information, and analysis and comparisons of search engines. Latest developments in search engines.
• Search engine showdown - compares and evaluates search engines from the searcher's perspective.

^ Top of page

Invisible web gateways

• Complete Planet - 70,000+ searchable databases and specialty search engines.
• Direct Search - a compilation of links to the search interfaces of resources which contain data not easily accessed by search engines.

Last revised: 20 January, 2012