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Web Search Engine FAQs
Gary Price put this excellent resource together

Finding information on the Internet can be done in basically 2 ways. You can either start at a particular site and follow the links provided for you, or you can utilize a search engine. See my Springboards if you like browsing.

The most important thing to remember if you are searching for something is not to limit yourself to one search engine or database. Each engine searches and indexes different sites to build its index. Most search engines search only World Wide Web sites, and then only HTML files. There are other formats becoming popular, for example PDF from Adobe. An engine which does index these types of documents is the AT1 database from PLS.

Secondly, don't forget about the "rest of the Internet" - Usenet newsgroups, and mailing lists. There is a wealth of information contained in these other resources.

Here is a link with some advice on using various search engines. Also, you might want to check out Search Engine Watch for more information.

Searching the Internet is a site that offers tutorials and tips on searching.

Below you will find first a list of "collections". Some of these are multi-engine resources, which can send your query to more than one engine. Others are handy collections of lots of engines in one spot - sort of a one-stop-search. Still others search only a specific topic or region.

At the bottom of this page you will find links that will take you to engines / databases specific to various "parts" of the Internet (WWW, mailing lists, newsgroups, etc.).

Collections / Specialty / Topical Engines

Choose the link below that you wish to search ...

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Amer Neely