Below is a list of all the major search engines we recommend to CyberSleuths. Clicking on a link will take you to their home page. We strongly suggest that you read the help file and familiarize yourself with both the advanced commands and any field searches or special commands the search engine may recognize. All search engines work differently, and many have their own special commands.

  • Adobe PDF Online Search Portable Document Files (Adobe's proprietary filetype). Adobe indexes thousands of PDF files on this site.
  • AltaVista Excellent advanced search utility which allows for several field searching commands.
  • AOL Excellent search of AOL homepages. Uses the ! operator to match like concepts.
  • AskJeeves Plain language search. Metasearches several indexes at once.
  • CleverSearch Article on Clever Searching - the next generation spidering from IBM.
  • Direct Hit Very accurate directory.
  • Dogpile Powerful Meta search engine (looksmart, findwhat, goto, direct hit, about, infoseek, lycos, google, altavista & yahoo!)
  • FAST Search (AllTheWeb) Fast and full boolean support. One of the largest indexes online.
  • GoTo Now called overture - Accurate coverage, different results than the top five.
  • Google Incredibly fast and simple searching. Indexes PDF files. Largest because of its intelligent index of hyperlinks.
  • HotBot Able to run complex searches using simple drop down menus.
  • InvisibleWeb Search the deep Web. This is a searchable directory of over 10,000 databases, archives, and search engines that contain information that traditional search engines have been unable to access.
  • ICQ search Look for ICQ (Mirabilis) home pages and personal profiles.
  • Go Excellent index. One of the top five spiders, search results different than other top five.
  • Ixquick Metasearch The world's most powerful metasearchengine.
  • LookSmart Web directory with quality categories.
  • Lycos Versatile advanced searches.
  • Mamma The mother of all search engines. Popular metasearch engine gathers and ranks results from the world's top indexes.
  • Netscape Search This old standby is worth a shot, especially for all the homepages in Netcenter.
  • NorthernLight Useful categorizing of index results into little blue folders.
  • ODP Open Directory Project.
  • Oingo Meaning-based search. Searches by associating word meanings using everyday language.
  • Raging Search was discontinued but AltaVista replaced it with a low profile and super-fast text only version. Competes with Google but uses field search commands.
  • SearchOneline Meta Search supports UK, US, Canada, and French regional searches, multiple languages, mailing and saving of results directly from the result list. Offers comprehensive news system powered by moreover.com. All features are free, just enter a search in the box at the top of the page. Advanced functions like news subscriptions require registration.
  • Snap! now NBCi Popular index yields different results than the top five.
  • WebCrawler Powerful metasearching.
  • Yahoo! The oldest and most popular category-based human edited directory. Uses Google for advanced index search.
  • Teoma Top result pages are grouped based on their topics.
  • Wisenut Categorizing and highly relevant engine crawls 50 million Web documents a day, faster than anyone else right now. Keep an eye on this one to inch in up on Google and AltaVista!
  • Vivisimo Award-winning "Clustering" meta-style search - does not have its own index but compiles categories of results from major news sites, auction sites, patent databases and the top 11 search engines. You can use traditional field search commands like host: link: image: etc.