EmailSee Also
Search Engine Links
Details about the top search engines
You can keep up with the latest information about Google at the company's official blog.
One article on Google's blog explains how Google personalizes your search results.
Yahoo! Search also provides an official blog with its latest news.
Yahoo! provides a helpful page on how to use its Search Assist feature.
MikesMarketingTools.com publishes a chart, last updated in February 2008, showing where various search engines get their listings and sponsored ads.
Christian Langreiter provides an interesting tool for comparing Google vs. Yahoo! results. When you enter a search term, dots and lines illustrate the relationship among the sites listed at Google vs. those at Yahoo!.
Privacy issues
PC World has an article on how to opt out of targeted advertising by the three major search engines. The article is partly a reaction to Google's announcement that it's starting to display ads based on the user's browsing history.
Michael Zimmer's thoughtful March 2009 article covers Google's new behavioral targeting in more detail.
A chart on TechNet, a Microsoft blog, last updated in February 2009, compares how Google, Yahoo!, ixQuick and Microsoft's search engines handle personal data they collect, indicating that Microsoft is the best at protecting privacy (not too surprising because this is a Microsoft blog).
Search engines for kids
Experts say some of the best kid-safe search engines are Ask Kids and Yahooligans!
If your children use the web for school research projects, you'll want to point them to a kid-safe search engine. These engines return only listings of sites that are kid-friendly, so you don't have to worry about your kids stumbling across questionable content. (ConsumerSearch also has a report on stand-alone
Tips on doing research on the web
NoodleQuest leads you through a brief quiz to help you find the best search tools for a certain research task, from defining a topic to getting expert information.
The University of California, Berkeley Library has useful articles on searching the Internet, including one on searching "The Invisible Web":
Greg Notess has written a book about search strategy. The outline includes quite a few links to useful tools and information.
Keeping up with the newest search engines and news
ResearchBuzz.com offers news about search engines, databases and other research tools via an e-mail newsletter and/or RSS news feed.
ResourceShelf.com, edited by Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy, publishes a blog and e-mail newsletter with resources for all kinds of online research.
Pandia.com has information and links to news and information on all aspects of Internet search.
Phil Bradley's blog is full of news and ideas about Internet searching, with an emphasis on Web 2.0.
Charles Knight's website on Alternative Search Engines is fun to explore if you want to try the newest search engines or find out about very specialized niche tools -- for example, a search engine for Netflix or a facial-recognition search engine for online videos.
Links to selected search engines:
Answers.com (owned by Info.com)
AOL Search ("enhanced" by Google)
Ask.com (owned by IAC/Interactive Corp.)
Blinkx (video)
Brainboost (owned by Answers.com)
Clusty (owned by Vivisimo)
Dogpile (owned by InfoSpace)
Info.com (meta-search)
Jux2 (meta-search)
Mamma (meta-search owned by Copernic)
MSN Search (Windows Live)