The Major Search Engines

Why are the services below considered to be the major search engines? They are all used extensively by searchers, making these commercially backed search engines more dependable for results.

These search engines are more likely to be well-maintained and upgraded when necessary to keep pace with the growing Web. Not all the services below are "true" search engines that crawl the Web, however. For instance, Yahoo and the Open Directory are "directories" that depend on humans to compile their listings. In fact, most of the services below offer both search engine and directory information, though they will predominately feature one type of result over another.

View the full list of 1000 quality search engines, directories, What's New, What's Cool, media outlets, and Web registries.

AOL Search -We support!
http://search.aol.com/

AOL Search allows its members to search across the web and AOL's own content from one place. The "external" version, listed above, does not list AOL content. The main listings for categories and web sites come from the Open Directory (see below). Inktomi (see below) also provides crawler-based results, as backup to the directory information. Before the launch of AOL Search in October 2000, the AOL search service was Excite-powered AOL NetFind.

AltaVista -We support!
http://www.altavista.com/

AltaVista is consistently one of the largest search engines on the web, in terms of pages indexed. Its comprehensive coverage and wide range of power searching commands makes it a particular favorite among researchers. It also offers a number of features designed to appeal to basic users, such as "Ask AltaVista" results, which come from Ask Jeeves (see below), and directory listings primarily from the Open Directory. AltaVista opened in December 1995. It was owned by Digital, then run by Compaq (which purchased Digital in 1998), then spun off into a separate company which is now controlled by CMGI.

Ask Jeeves -We support!
http://www.askjeeves.com/

Ask Jeeves is a human-powered search service that aims to direct you to the exact page that answers your question. If it fails to find a match within its own database, then it will provide matching web pages from various search engines. The service went into beta in mid-April 1997 and opened fully on June 1, 1997. Results from Ask Jeeves also appear within AltaVista.

Direct Hit -We support!
http://www.directhit.com/

Direct Hit is a company that works with other search engines to refine their results. It does this by monitoring what users click on from the results they see. Sites that get clicked on more than others rise higher in Direct Hit's rankings. Thus, the service dubs itself a "popularity engine." Direct Hit's technology is currently best seen at HotBot. It also refines results at Lycos and is available as an option at LookSmart and MSN Search. The company also crawls the web and refines this database, which can be viewed via the link above.

Excite -We support!
http://www.excite.com/

Excite is one of the most popular search services on the web. It offers a medium-sized index and integrates non-web material such as company information and sports scores into its results, when appropriate. Excite was launched in late 1995. It grew quickly in prominence and consumed two of its competitors, Magellan in July 1996, and WebCrawler in November 1996. These continue to run as separate services.

FAST Search -We support!
http://www.alltheweb.com/

Formerly called All The Web, FAST Search aims to index the entire web. It was the first search engine to break the 200 million web page index milestone. The Norwegian company behind FAST Search also powers the Lycos MP3 search engine. FAST Search launched in May 2000.

Go / Infoseek -We support!
http://www.go.com/

Go is a portal site produced by Infoseek and Disney. It offers portal features such as personalization and free e-mail, plus the search capabilities of the former Infoseek search service, which has now been folded into Go. Searchers will find that Go consistently provides quality results in response to many general and broad searches, thanks to its ESP search algorithm. It also has an impressive human-compiled directory of web sites. Go officially launched in January 2000. It is not related to GoTo, below. The former Infoseek service launched in early 1995.

GoTo -We support!
http://www.goto.com/

Unlike the other search engines, GoTo sells its listings. Companies can pay money to be placed higher in the search results, which GoTo feels improves relevancy. Non-paid results come from Inktomi. GoTo launched in 1997 and incorporated the former University of Colorado-based World Wide Web Worm. In February 1998, it shifted to its current pay-for-placement model and soon after replaced the WWW Worm with Inktomi for its non-paid listings. GoTo is not related to Go, above.

Google -We support!
http://www.google.com/

Google is a search engine that makes heavy use of link popularity as a primary way to rank web sites. This can be especially helpful in finding good sites in response to general searches such as "cars" and "travel," because users across the web have in essence voted for good sites by linking to them.

HotBot -We support!
http://www.hotbot.com/

Like AltaVista, HotBot is another favorite among researchers due to its large index of the web and many power searching features. In most cases, HotBot's first page of results comes from the Direct Hit service (see above), and then secondary results come from the Inktomi search engine, which is also used by other services. It gets its directory information from the Open Directory project (see below). HotBot launched in May 1996 as Wired Digital's entry into the search engine market. Lycos purchased Wired Digital in October 1998 and continues to run HotBot as a separate search service.

Inktomi
http://www.inktomi.com/

Originally, there was an Inktomi search engine at UC Berkeley. The creators then formed their own company with the same name and created a new Inktomi index, which was first used to power HotBot. Now the Inktomi index also powers several other services. All of them tap into the same index, though results may be slightly different. This is because Inktomi provides ways for its partners to use a common index yet distinguish themselves. There is no way to query the Inktomi index directly, as it is only made available through Inktomi's partners with whatever filters and ranking tweaks they may apply.

LookSmart -We support!
http://www.looksmart.com/

LookSmart is a human-compiled directory of web sites. In addition to being a stand-alone service, LookSmart provides directory results to MSN Search, Excite and many other partners. AltaVista provides LookSmart with search results when a search fails to find a match from among LookSmart's reviews. LookSmart launched independently in October 1996, was backed by Reader's Digest for about a year, and then company executives bought back control of the service.

Lycos -We support!
http://www.lycos.com/

Lycos started out as a search engine, depending on listings that came from spidering the web. In April 2000, it shifted to a directory model similar to Yahoo. Its main listings come from the Open Directory project, and then secondary results come from either Direct Hit or Lycos' own spidering of the web. In October 1998, Lycos acquired the competing HotBot search service, which continues to be run separately.

MSN Search -We support!
http://search.msn.com/

Microsoft's MSN Search service is a LookSmart-powered directory of web sites, with secondary results that come from AltaVista. RealNames and Direct Hit data is also made available. MSN Search also offers a unique way for Internet Explorer 5 users to save past searches.

Netscape Search -We support!
http://search.netscape.com/

Netscape Search's results come primarily from the Open Directory and Netscape's own "Smart Browsing" database, which does an excellent job of listing "official" web sites. Secondary results come from Google. At the Netscape Netcenter portal site, other search engines are also featured.

Northern Light -We support!
http://www.northernlight.com/

Northern Light is another favorite search engine among researchers. It features one of the largest indexes of the web, along with the ability to cluster documents by topic. Northern Light also has a set of "special collection" documents that are not readily accessible to search engine spiders. There are documents from thousands of sources, including newswires, magazines and databases. Searching these documents is free, but there is a charge of up to $4 to view them. There is no charge to view documents on the public web -- only for those within the special collection. Northern Light opened to general use in August 1997.

Open Directory -We support!
http://dmoz.org/

The Open Directory uses volunteer editors to catalog the web. Formerly known as NewHoo, it was launched in June 1998. It was acquired by Netscape in November 1998, and the company pledged that anyone would be able to use information from the directory through an open license arrangement. Netscape itself was the first licensee. Lycos and AOL Search also make heavy use of Open Directory data, while AltaVista and HotBot prominently feature Open Directory categories within their results pages.

RealNames -We support!
http://www.realnames.com/

The RealNames system is meant to be an easier-to-use alternative to the current web site addressing system. Those with RealNames-enabled browsers can enter a word like "Nike" to reach the Nike web site. To date, RealNames has had its biggest success through search engine partnerships. In particular, it is strongly featured in results at AltaVista, Go and MSN Search.

Snap -We support!
http://www.snap.com/

Snap is a human-compiled directory of web sites, supplemented by search results from Inktomi. Like LookSmart, it aims to challenge Yahoo as the champion of categorizing the web. Snap launched in late 1997 and is backed by Cnet and NBC.

WebCrawler -We support!
http://www.webcrawler.com/

WebCrawler has the smallest index of any major search engine on the web -- think of it as Excite Lite. The small index means WebCrawler is not the place to go when seeking obscure or unusual material. However, some people may feel that by having indexed fewer pages, WebCrawler provides less overwhelming results in response to general searches. WebCrawler opened to the public on April 20, 1994. It was started as a research project at the University of Washington. America Online purchased it in March 1995 and was the online service's preferred search engine until Nov. 1996. That was when Excite, a WebCrawler competitor, acquired the service. Excite continues to run WebCrawler as an independent search engine.

Yahoo -We support!
http://www.yahoo.com/

Yahoo is the web's most popular search service and has a well-deserved reputation for helping people find information easily. The secret to Yahoo's success is human beings. It is the largest human-compiled guide to the web, employing about 150 editors in an effort to categorize the web. Yahoo has over 1 million sites listed. Yahoo also supplements its results with those from Inktomi. If a search fails to find a match within Yahoo's own listings, then matches from Inktomi are displayed. Inktomi matches also appear after all Yahoo matches have first been shown. Yahoo is the oldest major web site directory, having launched in late 1994.