Power Reporting: Resources For Journalists - Categorized listings of research tools for journalists. Listings are annotated. (Visit)

Journalism Net - Award winning site of resources for a wide range of information. Very well organized. (Visit)

Journalist's Toolbox - Over 16,000 web sites useful for anyone doing research. Site features a search engine and pulldown menu to help locate information. (Visit) (NOT WORKING 10/03/07)

Nelson - Search engine designed for journalists. Provided by the Poynter Institute.

NewsLink Resources - Wide selection of resources.

Scoop Cybersleuth's Internet Guide - Categorized web sources of a reporter.

Journalists' Tools - Collection of resources compiled by Bob Drudge of Refdesk.com.

Academic:

Librarian's Index to the Internet - Indexed directory of informative Web sites with useful descriptions. (Try)
Compiled by librarians.

Academic Info - Educational gateway to high school, college and research level Internet resources.

Infomine - Directory of scholarly information on the Web.

General:

Yahoo! Directory - Best known, well organized collection of classified Web resources. Browse or search through hierarchical categories. (Try)

Open Directory Project - Excellent directory built by thousands of volunteers who sign up to serve as indexers for their areas of interest. Some prefer it to Yahoo! (Try)
(Chris Sherman. Humans Do It Better: Inside the Open Directory Project. ONLINE, July 2000.)

Other:

About.com - Collection of Internet guides maintained by subject experts.

Britannica Internet Guide - Directory of web sites, from the publishers of Encyclopedia Britannica.

Google - Advanced Search - Special Features - Labs - Language Tools - Help Central - Very large and fast. Search images, discussion groups, directory, news, catalogs, government, translation tools, dictionary, phone book, maps, similar pages, and more. No truncation or wildcards. Uses link popularity and number/quality of pages linking to a page as part of its relevance ranking system. (Try)
Google Scholar - About Google Scholar - Support For Libraries - Help - Advanced Search Tips (Try)
Librarian Center, Google For Educators (Take a Look)

Windows Live Search - Launced in 2006, it succeeds MSN Search. Has a "Question & Answer" feature in Beta (Take a Look)

Ask.com - Teoma - Results are separated into three groups: 1) relevant web pages, 2) suggestions to narrow your search, 3) expand your search. (Teoma was purchased by Ask Jeeves in 2001. Teoma branded as Ask.com in 2006.) (Try)

Yahoo! Search - Respected search engine. Search web, images, video, directory, news, products. Easy to use advanced search page. (Try)

AltaVista - Now owned by Yahoo, and not used by many people. At one time AltaVista had the most sophisticated search syntax. Could perform precise searches by looking for phrases, terms that are near each other, case-sensitive matches and restricting searches to titles or other fields of a document. An early offerer of Translation Feature and, Image Searching. AltaVista entry in Wikipedia.

Clusty - Organizes results into search specific clusters. Search a variety of specialized areas such as news. Previously Vivisimo. (Try)

Dogpile - Old favorite with lots of customizable options. (Try)

Ixquick - Ranks results based on the number of "top 10" rankings a site receives from the various search engines. Committed to user privacy. See the Ixquick Privacy Statement.   (Try)

MetaCrawler - One of the oldest meta search engines. Includes "Metaspy" which shows current Metacrawler searches.

Widow - Provides options for output, search type and content including a family filter.

RefDesk.com - Links to search engines and hundreds of reference sites. Created by Bob Drudge. Bob Drudge is the son of a reference librarian, and the father of Matt Drudge. (Visit)

Search Engine Guide - Guide to more than 3600 search engines, portals and directories. Can browse through categories or search.

WebPlaces.com Internet Search Page - Clear uncluttered listing of major search engines and popular reference sites

Essential Links - Entry point includes search boxes for several search sites. Essential Links Guide - Another categorized listing of major sites.

ALIWEB - Search box is at the top of the page. Links to major sites are categorized below the search box, but some of the links are outdated. Many people consider Aliweb to be the first web search engine.

The Ultimates - Search for people and businesses. Includes white pages, yellow pages, reverse searches, trip planners and email directories. (Try)

FindLaw - A directory of legal websites.

Law Crawler - Search engine that returns information from sites that have legal information.

Healthfinder - Government sponsored site with good consumer information.

Medical Search Engines - Listing of medical search engines from SearchEngineWatch.

Picsearch - Search engine for pictures and images.

First Gov - Can search or browse by category. US, state and local government web sites

Google US Government Search - Another area of the Google search engine that limits results to pages from US government web sites.

SearchGov.com - US and state government web sites

KidsClick - A MUST site done by librarians for kids. Includes search lessons.

FirstGov For Kids - A US govenrment interagency Kids Portal. Developed and maintained by the Federal Citizen Information Center. Topics are grouped by subject. There is also a search function.

Tek mom search site - Aimed at students. Includes search tools and reference tools.

Kids Search - Lists kids' search engines, dictionaries, resources for teachers.

Fact Monster - Information Please for kids.

Cybersleuth kids - Internet search guide for K-12 students.

AskforKids - From Ask.com.

The Visible Web vs. The Invisible Web - Describes the visible and invisible web. Gives examples and search sources. (From the Web Archive).

Invisible Web: What it is, Why it exists, How to find it, and Its inherent ambiguity - UC Berkeley, Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial.

Those Dark Hiding Places: The Invisible Web Revealed - Robert J. Lackie, Associate Professor-Librarian, Rider University

Search Engine Watch - (Browse) - Search Engine Listings - Ratings and Reviews - Danny Sullivan. Everything you ever wanted to know about search engines and more!

Search Engine Showdown - (Browse) - Reviews - Search Engine Features Chart - Search features and the search engines that support them - Statistics - Greg Notess. Compares and evaluates Internet search engines from the searcher's perspective.

Choose The Best Search For Your Information Need - (Browse) - Debbie Abilock. Advice on which search tool to use for different information needs.

History:

Search Engine History - from Wikipedia - While I cannot verify every fact, overall this gives a very good picture, and it is continuously updated. For history of particular search tools, click on the name of a specific search tool in the article or chart. (Browse)

Search Engine Relationships - From Bruce Clay Inc., a major web strategy consulting firm. See how the search market industry has changed over time on the Search Engine Relationships Histogram Page. Drag the slider along the timeline. (Browse)

Charts From Class:

InfoPeople - Best Search Tools Chart - (Print) - Search features of major search tools. There is also a link to a pdf version for better printing.

InfoPeople - Best Search Tools - Search boxes for recommended search engines, meta search engines, and directories.

Kids' Search Tools - Search boxes for kids' search engines, dictionaries, and resources for teachers.

Online  (Browse) - Selected full text.

Searcher  (Browse) - Selected full text.

Link-UP   (Browse) - Selected full text.

SearchDay Newsletter - Daily newsletter from Search Engine Watch

Research buzz - Weekly newsletter with Internet research news

Search Engine Report - Monthly newsletter from Search Engine Watch

Bare Bones 101: A Basic Tutorial On Searching The Web - Basic tutorial for getting started by Ellen Chamberlain of USC Beaufort.

Finding It Online: Web Search Strategies - Tutorial by training specialist Debbie Flanagan. Debbie Flanagan teaches Internet and online courses including Introduction to the Internet, Internet Business Research and Advanced Search Techniques.

Web Searching Tutorial - In depth tutorial by Scott Nicholson the Virtual Reference Librarian.

How Search Engines Work - From Search Engine Watch (read)

Googlebot - The Google Robot   (read)  

Slurp - Yahoo's Web Crawler (read)

The Web Robots Pages (browse)

How Search Engines Rank Web Pages - Danny Sullivan, SearchEngineWatch (read)

Google's PageRank - Brief explanation of Google's ranking algorithm. (read)