Campus Library

Search Indiana University

Internet Search Engines

Single search engines crawl the web, building a very, very large database of all the pages it's seen. Results are ranked according to complex database calculations.

Google
 
Yahoo!
 
AltaVista
 
ixquick
 
Lycos
 
Excite
 
Ask.com
 
Snap
 

Aggregate Search Engines

These search engines utilize the results from a number of different single search engines. This can provide a better composite output, but it loses the ability to rank the results as effectively as if you were to use a single search engine.

Webcrawler
 
Search.com
 
Dogpile.com
 
Metacrawler
 
Mamma
 

Search Engine Comparison Data

Search Engine Features Chart by Search Engine Showdown
This chart shows a tabular comparison of Google, Yahoo!, Ask, Windows Live® Search, Gigablast, Exalead, and WiseNut.
Best Search Tools Chart
This chart shows a similar but more detailed comparison of various search engines.
The Best Search Engines
Detailed instructions on effective search engine usage.
Another Web Search Engine Comparison Chart
Similar to the other ones