Search Index

Simple Strategy:

Visit the search tool site and carefully examine the features on its front page;
Determine what type of search tool you are working with. Is it a subject directory, search engine or meta-search engine, searching utility?
Visit the help or tips or about page. What are the "secrets" of the search tool?
Carefully examine and evaluate the search tool so that you know its best and worst features;
Is there a place for expert searchers? What special features does it offer?
Are there any other special features? (image searching? translation? subject trees?)
How are results organized and displayed? Are there summaries? Annotations? Keywords?
Are the first two or three pages of results highly relevant?
Try at least two searches to "road test" your search tool.

7 Step:

minus	plus	star	quotes	lower case	link:	title:
-exclude	+include	wildcard*	"phrases in quotes"	case MATTERS	find pages linked	find words in the title

Subject Directories Use a subject directory when you are beginning your search and don't know a lot about the topic. Subject directories link you to websites chosen by humans (not by software, as some search engines find websites), and these humans are often experts in their fields.

Librarians' Index to the Internet (http://lii.org)
INFOMINE (http://infomine.ucr.edu)
Academic Info (http://www.academicinfo.net)
About.com (http://about.com)
KidsClick! (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!) Especially for elementary students!
Yahooligans! (http://yahooligans.com) Another search engine for younger students.

The Invisible Web The Invisible or Deep Web consists of subscription Databases that generally can't be accessed through search engines. You can, however, find these rich materials by using the following special search tools.

Invisible-web.net (http://www.invisible-web.net)
Invisible Web.com (http://invisibleweb.com)
Genius Find (www.geniusfind.com)
Librarians' Index to the Internet (http://lii.org)
Incy Wincy (http://www.incywincy.com)

Horizontal Searching Horizontal search tools automatically organize your "hits" into categories, helping you eliminate irrelevant sites. For example, sites on Washington, DC, will be separated from sites on George Washington. Traditional search engines are vertical tools, as they give you long lists of hits to sort through. You might start with a horizontal search engine to become familiar with your topic and then move on to a vertical search engine like Google to complete your search.

Vivisimo (http://vivisimo.com)
Teoma (http://teoma.com)
Turbo10 (http://turbo10.com)