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 Yahoo | Metacrawler | Buycomp | Inq |
| Dejanews | Light | Whatis | Esp |
| Altavista | Thunder | Excite | Askjeeves |
| Hotbot | Sharewarecom | Win95com | Internic |
| Ftpsearch |
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BuyComp - best online hard/soft store. They ship so fast, it's
beyond belief and comprehension. Pretty good prices too.
On a negative note, as of fall 98, their website went down the
drain - doesn't work with all browsers and gives errors way too
often.
- Inquiry.com - claims to 'give developers answers to tough development questions'. And that's exactly what it does.
- Dejanews - archives Usenet messages as far back as 95. Perfect way to find info that is discarded by news servers because it is old. Also can be used as a newsreader.
- Google - this search engine claims that it excels in finding relevant results - and so it does! When looking at results page you can see what exactly matched your keywords on every site - so you can filter some even before you clicked on them.
When you enter several words, will show whether a site had 'phrase match'!
(2 weeks later) This engine is one of a kind! More often than not the very first hit is the correct one!- Northern Light - Has some nice additions to regular search engine arsenal. For example, if many hits originate from the same site, they will be grouped in folders. Also, search results include some commercially available articles (summary can be viewed for free).
- Yahoo - nowadays, distinction between directories and search engines is blurred - most leading engines also add directories. Yet, Yahoo was the first and still is the best directory.
- Metacrawler - can be useful when the keyword is so obscure that several search engines return junk or 'no hits'. When you need to find one site that does have relevant info, Metacrawler is your best bet.
- Hotbot - Yet Another Search Engine. Has a convenient option for ego surfing: "find links to this URL". Also, excels in returning relevant hits bu giving preference to top level domains - for exaple search for "Pacific Memory Group" returns that company's website, while results from Northern Light and Excite are not as good.
- Excite - today (06/21/97)) I think it's the top of the line. But who knows what I'll say tomorrow ?
- Altavista - used to be the best, but seems like it doesn't update its database that fast. Also, 'and' search, like word1+word2 returns no hits very, very often.
- whatis.com - glossary that contains definitions for every computer term under the Moon.
- ComputerESP - search multiple online stores and find the lowest price on specified hardware/software.
- FTP Search - There used to be a site called Filez which for a while overtook FTP Search as the King of File Search. However the glory days of Filez are over. Too often it returns empty list or pages full of irrelevant advertising junk. FTP Search is once again the best.
BTW, there's server www.ftpsearch.com, but I think it's a hoax. First, original FTP Search site doesn't list this one as a mirror. Second, it uses Filez server - and subsequently searches result in familiar "No hits".
Wednesday 11/25/98 - FTP Search got bought by Lycos and server has moved from Norway to U.S.
- Thunderstone - this engine surprised me by returning many new hits where other engines said that there's nothing left. Another interesting feature - the sites returned on top of the list are those that contain the keyword on their main page - interesting idea and I think it does improve relevancy.
- Ask Jeeves - experimental search engine - supposedly you can ask it questions in plain English. Yet, so far none of the questions I asked were answered by it's recognition module - it did provide good metasearch results though - from Alta Vista, Lycos, WebCrawler, Excite and Infoseek.
- Shareware.com - great software archive!
- Windows95.com - even better file collection, yet their search engine sux, milgly put. Instead of returning direct hits, it shows only pages of their site, where hits are found - you have to go to the page and then look for the file you want by using 'Find' in web browser.
- Internic - allows to to lookup domain names, keyword search is supported!
- Inquiry.com - claims to 'give developers answers to tough development questions'. And that's exactly what it does.