WWW Search Engines

A search engine allows you to look for a specific topic on the World Wide Web. When researching your topic, you can choose from many different search engines on the Internet, such as AltaVista, Lycos, Magellan, Infoseek, and HotBot. Each search engine has distinguishing characteristics affecting the way it retrieves information from the Web, which in turn affects the results of a given search. Keep in mind these differences as you look for information:

AltaVista (http://altavista.digital.com) is a popular search engine that uses a keyword-search format. AltaVista searches registered user's Web pages for the information requested. If the information you request is too broad or if there are too many sites to browse, AltaVista allows you to narrow the search by using tables. Also, if you do not use or have a popular Web browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape, AltaVista lets you browse and search its Web site using a text version.

Metacrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com) runs the same search in a variety of search engines, which include AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, Webcrawler, and Yahoo. Metacrawler picks selected sites from each search engine. If you are looking for as many references as possible, Metacrawler would not be a good search engine because it selects about ten sites from each search engine. Try AltaVista or HotBot if you want to retrieve a large number of references. One of Metacrawler's helpful features is that you can limit your search to include information pertaining to a specific geographic region.

Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com) is one of the oldest search engines on the Internet. Known for mostly searching entertainment sites, Yahoo offers more than one way to search for information. Not only can you just type in the topic, but you can choose from a list of categories and indices. Yahoo's distinguishing feature is that in a very logical,organized way, it leads you from a list of broad topics to narrower, more specific topics . Yahoo is a still a popular search engine; however, it only searches sites that are registered with Yahoo.

HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com) is another good general search engine that uses a keyword format. It searches more than 50 million documents in its database and ranks search results by relevance. Using HotBot's pulldown menus, users can limit search results by geographic location, date, and media type.

REMEMBER: When looking for sources on the Internet, use more than one search engine since different search engines produce different results. Select Web sites that are reputable and reliable so that your final paper is credible. Consult Evaluating Print and Electronic Sources for more information on finding reliable Web sources. Also, be sure to follow an appropriate documentation style like MLA or APA as you borrow information from sources. See Documentation in the Writing Handbook for more information.

E-mail your comments and suggestions to the YSU Grant Team (cardcat@bgnet.bgsu.edu).