Search Tools
About.com has evolved from Mining.com but retains its approach that the best way to index Internet information is through one of several hundred dedicated experts. Each introduces and maintains links for his/her own specific topical area of expertise, reviewing them and keeping only those of high quality.
The most convenient and compact yet comprehensive portal to the Web I’ve found is at HotSheet. It’s worth considering making this the start page you see when your browser opens since you can get practically anywhere from here. What is more you can now customize it. (John Milburn)
You’re probably comfortable searching for text documents on the Web, but did you know you can now search in the same way for photos, audio and video clips – at Altavista? Just click the appropriate radio button above the search box and proceed as normal.
Are you fed up with obtaining 23,753 hits on a simple request using a search engine? Get selective and go to Magellan which attempts to evaluate sites. Or you can try Web 100 that lists the top 100 sites by (its idea of) quality or Hatbox that lists the top 1000 by frequency of access.
Another search engine, Northern Lights sorts the results into useful categories. Even more sophisticated is Ask Jeeves, highly popular with rookie searchers. Submit your question in plain English and you’ll surely be pleased with the helpful results. Try clicking first on its What can I ask? Button. A new and rather different searching approach is the so-called Web Ring. Choose a topic from this site’s categorized listing; sites relevant to this topic are connected in a ring. All such sites have a box on the main page with links to the other related sites in the ring. There are already rings on thousands of topics.
Alexa is named after the great library in Alexandria, Egypt during the era of the pharaohs. You can download this free, innovative browser add-on that pulls together lots of useful information in one place: a search engine, a reference desk and ratings of sites. Its most innovative feature lets you avoid those pesky Error 404’s when a site is missing. Instead, Alexa will serve up an earlier version of the page from its enormous web archive.
