Searching the internet
Australian search engines
Other search engines
Meta search engines
Internet search guides
Beginners Guides to the Internet
Also: Subject Links
Search engines are powerful tools for finding words, names or phrases on the Web. Each engine searches its own database of Web sites. Many engines index more than 50 million Web pages and are generally updated weekly. Many search engines index the full text of Web pages: others (e.g. Lycos) index selected portions only. Search limit options are improving constantly, allowing you to tailor searches more finely. Search engines offer extensive online help.
Australian search engines
| Search engine | Description |
|---|---|
| www.australia.gov.au | Australian Government site (Use searchgov feature to search.) |
| Sensis.com.au | Australian search site incorporating whitepages, yellowpages, whereisit and looksmart. |
| Yahoo (Australia & NZ) | The Australian & New Zealand section of the popular subject directory. You can limit this to just Australia. |
Other search engines
| Search engine | Description |
|---|---|
| Alta Vista | Large, powerful, fast. Indexes both web sites & Usenet newsgroups. |
| Ask Jeeves | Natural language search engine (try just typing in your question!) |
| Clusty | This search engine categorises results into groups (clusters) for ease of searching. |
| Google uses link analysis to return the most relevant results for your search terms. | |
| Google Scholar | enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports. Many resources require subscription or other "pay to view" arrangements |
| Lycos | Lycos now offers a subject directory as well as a search engine for the Web & for other destinations, e.g. Reuters. Rates sites. |
| MSN Search beta | The latest search engine from Microsoft. Allows easy search for images and if you go into search builder you can edit the result ranking criteria to suit your preference. |
| Web Crawler | Very fast, but only displays URL and title. Also includes subject categories |
Meta search engines
Because multiple search engines offer the same interface across different search engines, they may not be able to provide the unique searching options of the original tool. Flexibility is sacrificed for convenience. Valuable for quick uncomplicated searches.
| Search engine | Description |
|---|---|
| alltheweb | Claims to search the largest database of Web sites in existence. very fast. |
| Dogpile | This allows you to search the Web, Usenet, News and FTP sites. You can search one of the four and then stop, or search one, and then another. Results are returned tool by tool. |
| MetaCrawler | Searches other search engines in parallel. It can automatically restrict the number of displayed responses by weeding out irrelevant, outdated and unavailable material from the results. Hits can be categorised - e.g. web pages, audio etc. |
| SavvySearch | Designed to send a user's query to multiple search engines in real time. This multi-threaded search tool provides a common user interface for querying several search engines and then compares and summarises the results before display. You can search by media and within domains (e.g. commercial or academic.) |
| Search 66 | Does parallel searches with world or Australian search engines. All of the results are combined to give the best matches first. |
| Surf Wax | A new meta-search tool which allows you to sample the site without leaving the search results window. |
Internet search guides
| Search engine | Description |
|---|---|
| Finding Information on the Internet | A good resource covering such issues as advanced searching and how to maximise your Google use. |
| How to search the web: a guide to search tools | Explains how to use special commands to do a very precise search. It's a good idea to look at the search help screen for each search engine as well. |
| Internet Detective | Tutorial covering Internet search skills |
| Pilot, your information navigator | QUT's series of online tutorial on Information Literacy (eg defining topics, evaluating information etc) |
Beginners Guides to the Internet
The following are some good basic tutorials on the internet and how to use it. They are designed with the novice user in mind and don't assume you are familiar with technical terms. Don't forget that there are some very good resources held in the library on this topic as well as helpful staff to assist you if you as required.
| Search engine | Description |
|---|---|
| AARP Learn the Internet | Basic Browsing | This web site offers tutorials on seven major areas of internet use such as Understanding basics, Titles, Menu and Tool Bars etc |
| Chiff.com - Computer Basics | This site contains hand picked and evaluated beginners guides to Internet Guides and tutorials on computer literacy. |
| Stay safe online.info | American site with good tips for how to keep your computer secure. |
| Netiquette, by Virginia Shea | A very easy to read introduction to network etiquette, the do's and don'ts of online communication. |