Talk:List of search engines

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 2006/10/16. The result of the discussion was speedy keep.

Contents

[edit] Tweetscan

Can we add a reference to the Twitter search tool "Tweetscan" ? dave evans (talk) 03:41, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] nayio

A new search engine that allows users to find tunes by humming.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.120.172.185 (talk) 03:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] I propose a suggestion part, here it is for people who are too lazy to clean up the publication for the main page :

So looks like you forgot the following Google based search engine : http://www.mozbot.fr probably only in French, but it got international search options, and it really adds some services to Google! Yes seems to be possible! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.228.137.82 (talk • contribs).

Please consider listing Search Engine Colossus: International Directory of Search Engines http://www.searchenginecolossus.com] in the External links section...although I do not regard anyone as "lazy" :> —The preceding unsigned comment was added by BryanStrome (talk • contribs).

Per long-standing editors' consensus, only search engines that have their own page on Wikipedia are suitable for inclusion on the page here. DMacks 19:50, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

How come no 1banana.com? 98.196.117.157 (talk) 01:03, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Linkspam

Has it occurred to anyone how often anonymous users try to linkspam this page? Isn't that a problem? Maybe this list wasn't such a good idea. --Ardonik 03:46, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)

  • I'm getting sick of cleaning up after the linkspam here. I have excised ALL external links; from now on, any red link or external link added to this article will be suspect. --Ardonik 19:32, 2004 Aug 4 (UTC)
  • Removed Wowla external links. Never heard of it before now, doubt I ever will again.
  • Does a search engine really have to be popular to be listed here, I mean it is a list after all.
  • Answer: yes. WP:NOT a directory, still less a tool to help webmasters optimise their pagerank. General consensus is that lists like this should contain only those for which Wikipedia articles exist - no weblinks, no redlinks - for the reasons stated above. If you think a particular engine is notable, feel free to make an article on it and link it in the right section. Just zis Guy you know? 17:14, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What are the definitions?

Can anyone give the defination to each kind of search engine. For example,

metasearch engine
A metasearch engine is a search engine that sends user requests to several other search engines and returns the results from each one.

Thanks.

I agree, Putting in definitions- [snuff]

Ardonik, you are a MoFo...I hate you for no particular reason.

[edit] More linkspam

It's happening again. The number of red links and article-less external links on this page are starting to rise. I plan to delete every search engine referenced on this page that does not have its own article--even engines that might potentially be notable (if they truly are, a dedicated contributor will add them later.) In some cases, entire categories of links will be eliminated. --Ardonik.talk()* July 3, 2005 05:35 (UTC)

Done. I only went halfway — I have kept the red links for the time being in hopes that they will be fleshed out into useful articles later.
Nowadays, it seems like every medium, online or otherwise, is eventually turned into a billboard for one company or another. I can't stand it. --Ardonik.talk()* July 3, 2005 05:44 (UTC)
I just excised the external links again. Fortunately, a number of them are notable enough to have article here on Wikipedia. --Wrathchild (talk) 20:12, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ixquick

Ixquick.com calls itself a "metasearch engine" and has been around for several years - I think it needs to be added to the "List of search engines"

The stub sucks, but I guess it's okay to add a link. --Ardonik.talk()* 00:52, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

- A metasearch engine should be listed as such. Just because it has been around for a long time it should not be assumed to be something it is not. - Anaras 11:06, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Internet search engines or WWW?

The article's title says Internet search engines, but inside the article, WWW search engines. Not the same think you know. :) Should this article be renamed, or <blank>? Newmanbe 02:51, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

The article shouldn't be renamed -- rather, the listings should conform to a higher standard. There is plenty of stuff in here which is either a simple directory or a very basic commercial listing page, rather than a search engine.

The term search engine refers to a website with several characteristics including:

  • a crawler program (or 'bot') that gathers listings of a particular datatype
  • an index program or database of the listings which is kept up to date (note: data may also be submitted directly to the index)
  • a search program with a familiar Google- or Yahoo-style interface that enables simple entry of keywords and a 'go' button to begin the search.

Suggestion: edit the list and remove all non-search engine sites, OR split the list into separate pages for search engines, directories, and other listing sites. My preference would be to just list search engines, however to be clear i work for one (SimplyHired.com) so my opinion is biased.dave 07:42, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I disagree, a search engine is not limited the World Wide Web, for example Jughead (computer), Archie search engine, and Veronica (computer). There are still servers running those search engines (Jughead and Veronica at least). If the title does not to be changed, then the introduction does. Newmanbe 16:13, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm... well i think the usefulness of non-WWW internet search engines is rather limited for most mortals, but if we need to expand the suggestion to include those fine with me. My comment was more about removing or moving the sites with limited search functionality, or those with overly-narrow scope that look more like directories or simple compilations.dave 20:19, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I am not saying that that is what the list should be. I am simply saying that there is an inconsistency in the introduction and the title. You said that the title should not be changed, so it would follow that that the introduction does. Newmanbe 20:25, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

ok, i think i understand what you're saying now. i think the difference between 'Internet' and strictly 'Web' search engines is relatively minor, but i won't quibble there. my point was more about the 'search engine' part, in that right now the list of items includes a number of sites which are not search engines, even if you stretched the meaning of the term quite a bit. so perhaps if you'd like we could even just drop the 'Internet' qualifier, and call it a 'List of Search Engines'? i think that will resolve your issue, although i believe the list would still have to be cleaned up to meet a more rigorous definition of 'search engine'.dave 01:09, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'd rather drop the Web search engine part, but if what you said is what people want, so be it. Benn Newman 16:42, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

i'm still a Wikipedia newbie, and i'm a little hesitant to be so be bold as to jump in and change the title of a pretty big article like this in my first few days of editing... however, i feel pretty strongly this page should be about search engines, rather than directories. there are perhaps 50-200 relevant web-based specialty search engines that would make sense to list here, but if the title is loosely interpreted to include directories & listing sites, the number would easily be in the thousands.

if others agree, i'd like to suggest we keep the title as is (or tighten to WWW internet search engines if you'd prefer, though i don't think that's necessary). furthermore, i'd suggest we take a more strict view of the definition of search engine, and reduce the # of sites listed on this page by around 2/3. since i also work for a job search engine i feel that my perspective is biased, but with just job search alone there are easily over 1,000 sources for job listings -- of which perhaps less than 10 truly qualify as search engines.

since you appear to have more experience here, can you suggest an approach to resolve title? should a separate page be created for directories and such? other thoughts?dave 21:49, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone else have anything to say about this? Benn Newman 12:19, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criteria for inclusion

I deleted the [[hakia]] entry - according to the Hakia page - it is a beta version. I readded hakia before reading this. I removed the red link to WinSrev since there is not even a stub page for this topic, and http://www.winsrev.com seems non-functional. From the google cache of the page it looks like somebody's amateur attempt at a search engine ("Searching 182,725 web pages!") and a little more google searching shows that it is quite a joke indeed. --Rhomboid 07:50, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I propose a link of a search engines directory (like search engines colossus) : http://www.searchenginesdir.com - Ababou, 21 February 2006

It seems that there is only one search engines directory that has the right to be on Wikipedia : Search Engine Colossus, and no others. Any reason for that ? - 07 March 2006

The reason would be WP:SPAM. A lot of spam links have been added, the more ads a site has the more likely it is to be removed as spam. Just zis Guy you know? 10:13, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I've removed the last external link, I'm unconvinced that is satisfies the guidelines set forth in Wikipedia:External links but I'm open to hearing counterarguments. - brenneman{T}{L} 02:46, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Added/rearranged IRC search engines

I added a few external links to some XDCC and IRC search engines, and seperated the two sections. This is NOT linkspam, I'm simply too lazy to create a wikipedia entry for every single site. If someone wants to do so, by my guest. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.248.132.180 (talk • contribs)

As I said on my talk page, I removed your external links because this is an article of links to Wikipedia articles about search engines, not an article of links to search engines (see article introduction). Most XDCC and IRC search engines would not fulfill WP:WEB and articles on them would thus possibly face deletion for non-notability. Haakon 22:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A comment about Search Engines

I must point out that many of the websites mentioned in this article are not in fact search engines, but instead content-providing websites. The articles that these search engines are linked to do NOT define them as search engines, thus should not be posted as such. The following articles are examples of this:

  1. AOL
  2. ICQ
  3. Netscape (?)
  4. Amazon.com
  5. Barnes & Noble
  6. Buy.com
  7. Dulance
  8. eBay
  9. NexTag
  10. Shopping.com
  11. All Headline News
  12. CNN
  13. MSNBC
  14. Internet Archive (sorry, simply not a search engine.)
  15. WebMD
  16. Thomas Register

Just because a website has a search capability does not make it a search engine. I suggest that these articles be removed, and a specific criteria for addition of search engines be defined. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.248.132.180 (talk • contribs)

I totally agree with the above guys comment, but only with the intent of his comment. Amazon.com's service, A9 (a9.com), is a real search engine. The AOL listing is controversial, because, depending on its definition, is so ingrained into society, that to some people it represents what is a computer. In this regard, it is providing to the user a means of search. That, and I remember in the 90s that AOL introduced "keyword based access", which is a controlled vocabulary, supervised classification system, which very much falls into the definition of a search engine. Internet Archive provides a mean to search its cache, and so, it is a search engine. EBay provides its own means of searching its products, so it is, by all means, a search engine. I could go on, but you see my point. This type of above statement is an example of the problem of 'search engine' being very, very, loosely defined. Even with the above topic on the definition of a search engine, it is STILL very loosely defined.Josh Froelich 19:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Where is ask?

Ask.com is number three or four in search engines after Google, Yahoo and possibly MSN. I guess this should give it the right of an entry in this list. But where is it? Missing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.158.181.247 (talk • contribs)

It wasn't there because nobody has added it. I added it now (and you could have, too). Haakon 21:52, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kolai.com

I added Kolai [1] to regional search engines. It is a search engine from Turkey.

I removed it per the first sentence of this article; it is only for internal links. --Haakon 07:35, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] definitions again

amazon.com and some of the others questioned above are collections of programs, some of which are search engines in the sense of programs used to search a database-- amazon's database --or mshould we say collection of databases-- etc. can be searched with their own search engine, which is described on the Amazon.com page, or by external engines. Similarly, google etc maintain large internal databases and are more than a search engine. Dialog is a database aggregator, but also comprises several search engines, & I am not sure what part is the most important.

I have not encountered any adequate term to describe such systems. The term search engine, is defined in that article as "A search engine or search service is a program designed to help find information stored on a computer system", which is about as nonspecific as you can get., I'm not arguing any point, but hoping for information. DGG 05:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I have removed a load of non search engines including Amazon and ridiculous ones like YouTube which is a video clip service. It has a search engine to search its vast content but that doesnt make it a search engine and I amn baffled as to how anyone can define it as search. I strongly suspect the page the page needs further culling. IMO all the examples here should include the search engine link within the first sentence of their respective articles, surely that should be the make or break test of inclusion here. Otherwise you could include any and all websites with an internal search facility, BBC has such a facility but we cant call the BBC a search engine and it would dilute the term as to make it meaningless and this article on of the largest on wikipedia. While Google image, etc are sub search engines of google they need to have their own article to be notable here, I believe, SqueakBox 18:31, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your take on this, but, as it happens, there is a page List of Google products which links to an article about Google Image, and many of the other special search facilities. Like them or not, all of them that are still around do qualify as notable. (Not all of them are like the advanced search options, where it just puts a prefix qualifier in to limit to part of the database.) It is not our fault if everything that can possibly be called a search engine is called a search engine. We follow usage, not authorize it. I can understand not wanting to have a category like a "List of Computer programs." Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the possibility :) DGG 06:00, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Exalead should be added

Or are I'm wrong?

It is defned as a search engine so it should go in, SqueakBox 01:34, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Remove cleanup tag?

The cleanup tag was put here by EurekaLott in November 2005. [2]. His comment was "Article is full of linkspam. Adding cleanup tag." Since all surviving entries in today's file are Wikipedia articles, can we conclude there is no more linkspam? If that's the case, the tag should be removed, since there is nothing to clean up. EdJohnston 05:09, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. -Patstuart 05:11, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] planned improvements

The improvement in this page is well under way, and it is ironic that these comments should have been made just as it was starting. My intention, at any rate, is to rename this page List of academic databases and search engines, and have catregroized asnd alphabetical lists--alongwith liikns to pages aboutthe various types, and about the concept. Please check the current definition of search engine--it is now being used as much more inclusive than a program to search a database.: a search engine or search service is a document retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system, such as on the World Wide Web, inside a corporate or proprietary network, or in a personal computer If the page is going to disappear it will be replaced by a page planned properly from the start, but it might be better to work with this. WP is not a list, means wp is not only a list. There are many hundred lists in WP, some with annotation, it can serve as a very useful index to the material. People use lists as finding aids: "I'm not sure what its called exactly, but if I can look at a list I'll pick it out" This takes more than a few days; I will try to upgrade this as qquickly as possible. I can understand the feeling about it as it now stands. DGG 22:17, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry if I nominated this article for deletion right before a planned improvement. I also understand that list are okay, but just a list is not. What I do not see is how this article can ever become more than just a list. What do you have planned?
Regardless I am not dead set on killing this article, but I have started the nomination and still stand by my reasoning. Perhaps in light of new information I may change my mind. HighInBC 22:40, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
A list is effective because it focuses subjects. The alphabetical part of a list is usually just an index, but

if annotated a little it can do more: see the "list of librarians for the sort of thing I've done, and I'd do-- gives enough bio in a word to two to place the person, separates out what might well be separate pages once we get enough data, and puts the problems in places where people will see them.
This can be done in a more complicated way with categories, but this may be overkill for this subject.

There's a more important problem, which is why I stopped. I do not think it is clear what a search engine is. Most large systems are databases, and can be searched. A great many of them store documents, and they can be searched. In a sense all such systems can be seen as programs, or as interactive systems (nowadays), or as search engines. The 2 key operations of most programs are sorting and searching. cf. Knuth v.1. WP in that sense is a search engine., and there's part of it which is in a more strict sense. My example is Amazon. It has a separate dedicated search engine in the narrow sene, "A9" which it also licenses for use elsewhere.

I invite your help about terminology. -- and about useful material. -- and about the right name for the page.
Should everything in WP that can possibly be seen as a search engine be included?

The alternative, if this is hopelessly unclear, is to restart it, intact or in parts. But since there is an article "search engines" it seems obvious there should be a list of them. I too am not prepared to insist.

DGG 05:30, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] comparison shopping engines

In the meantime, I re-added the comparison shopping engines.
The search engine page says "A search engine or search service is a document retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system, such as on the World Wide Web, inside a corporate or proprietary network, or in a personal computer. The search engine allows one to ask for content meeting specific criteria" This is an extremely broad definition, given the extremely broad meaning of "document" in this context. These systems find documents about comparative prices. This is not linkspam--this page is intended to list anything in widespread use of or technical note.
Can those who do not like it please explain the criteria by which these are not search engines but the property or business search engines are?
Personally, I do not particularly like the term "search engine" but, again, what is a good alternative?DGG 03:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thematic Search Engines

Could we re-structure the list of search engines adding a category "Thematic Search Engines"? This could potentially include "News Search Engines", "Property Search Engines", "Charity Search Engines", "Business Search Engines", "Medical Search Engines". Thematic search engines often employ semantic web techniques and thematic entity extraction (e.g. a legal search engine may be able to identify references to laws or definitive legal texts; or a property search engine may be able to identify zip codes), making them a somewhat special category. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 168.202.64.1 (talk • contribs) 21 Nov 2006.

This could make some sense if this were a normal article rather than a list. When you are just making a list, how are you going to evaluate which ones do thematic entity extraction? Will you have someone verify that feature before making the addition? So far this page is just a pure list of names. And will you change the criteria for a search engine being included? EdJohnston 21:50, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Aliweb concerns: http://www.aliweb.com may not be a bona fide search engine

While there is an article Aliweb, and there is a web site at www.aliweb.com, the latter seems (at first glance) entirely promotional and unlikely to be of genuine value to most Wikipedia readers. A genuine project called Aliweb, descended from Archie and documented (somewhat) in the early 90's, did exist but may no longer have any real connection to aliweb.com, at least, none that is visible to users of the present-day site. The search engine which is provided at aliweb.com is unable to find 'wikipedia' or 'google'. I put forward this opinion at Talk:Aliweb though User:Bill Slawski had previously made similar comments on Talk:Aliweb. The only defender of the link to aliweb.com is an anonymous contributor. One possible remedy is to stubbify the Aliweb article, since at present it has no reliable sources. Removing Aliweb from List of search engines is of course an option. Please respond here if you have ideas for how to address the problem. EdJohnston 20:10, 25 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] I don't see a problem here

The Aliweb article should stay. A good analogy would be deleting references to the Altair 8800 as the first personal computer because it doesn't have a mouse or a graphical user interface so therefore its not a "bona fide" peronal computer. Then if Ed Roberts sold the company to someone else or gave it to them . . . well that would mean they have nothing to do with the original Altair company MITS -- "no real connection". And of course, that would mean we would need to stubbify the article. Of course if these people that were given or bought the company and knew something about the subject were to offer any factual information, they would be ignored and could not possibly be credible.

If Wozniak and Jobs describe the orgins of Apple personal computers in an article on wikipedia, would anyone believe what they say? Do they need to have references? I mean, this is ridiculous. It is very common knowledge that Aliweb is the web's first search engine as well as it is common knowledge how Woz and Jobs created the first Apple I computer. Believe it or not, the Earth travels in an orbit around the Sun, there is a big store called Wal-Mart that you can buy toothpaste from, the Spruce Goose could fly, a flying machine powered by two 180 horse power steam engines, 17 foot propellers, and a wing area of 4000 square feet, flew 200 feet before crashing in 1894, and there is a popular magazine currently available called "Maxim".

You should really do some research. aliweb 11:18, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

It's up to the consensus of the editors as to whether they find your argument convincing. Can you think of anyone who would actually BENEFIT from using your search engine? Do you yourself use aliweb.com to search in preference to Google, knowing that Aliweb apparently has a 1993 version of the web? The fact that Woz and Jobs created Apple is documented in many reliable sources (WP:RS) including print publications, while the current Aliweb article has no printed sources. Your possible personal connection to the company suggests you should avoid editing their article or adding a link to their site, due to conflict of interest (WP:COI). EdJohnston 21:46, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I would hope that the "editors" would find my argument which is the equivalent of "the sun is hot" convincing (and obvious). "Aliweb apparently has a 1993 version of the web" again you need to do some research. I guess visitors to the Smithsonian derive no benefit from their visit because of all the OLD things there. Aliweb is referenced in print publications as well as many places on the web (again do some research). Lets see, the site aliweb.com exists. If I put a link to it and I am the grand potentate high master of aliweb.com or I hate the web site's name being mentioned, its not going to change the fact that aliweb.com exists. Nor will it change any other facts concerning the service or its history. Again, I'm not seeing the problem here other than you not wanting to do research and contribute positively to the article, and wanting instead to discredit everything concerning it. That's why I question your motives here. You would think I was trying to convince you that there is a bridge in New York you can buy from me and charge tolls and get rich rather than asking you if the water was wet and you saying nope feels like sun heated sand. aliweb 09:31, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion for Table

I think this article needs to be more encyclopaedic. It should have references for each entry, a very clear definition of why or why not services are listed, introductory content, and it should have definitions for each category. I propose, therefore, a classification scheme. Basically, present this information as a table. Each row is a specific service. Each column represents a different attribute or way of splitting up the various services. This also lets people focus on only certain services by looking at only specific values. Of note would be there should not be any subjective preference to the order in which the services are listed, or the order of the features, or the level of detail. I know some of these very minor features are huge to smaller services as that is what they consider to be their competitive advantage in the market.

The table should list the services alphabetically, by the corporate name (not parent corporate, not url). The features should be listed alphabetically, or by some well-defined order of importance, perhaps by how much each attribute differentiates each service.

This would also solve the problem that some of these services support many of these categories, maybe some more than others, but it leaves out information. Perhaps add content and offer it as a way for an article reader to be guided to which service he wants to learn about, objectively. By getting more objective, with references, descriptions, and logical organization, it will add some support to this currently poorly structured article.

Some of the attributes I am considering:

  • Meta Search - a classification as to whether the search engine provides its own service by generating its own results, or incorporates the results of one or more other services, regardless of how it integrates or represents those results. Should try and note the service(s) used
  • Vertical Market/Subject/Theme (not sure the best name) - this is a categorical listing of the specific types of searches available. Each service listed would display one or more of these in a list. These would include:
    • People
    • Answers
    • Websites
    • Medical
    • Accountancy
    • BitTorrent
    • Property
    • Business
    • Comparison Shopping
    • Charity
    • Places/Geography
  • Content Type - what is the content
    • Webpages
    • Blogs/feeds
    • News
    • Images/Videos
    • Multimedia
  • Interface - interface categories
    • Standard Search Query/Advanced Search Form
    • Visual Interface
  • Supplementary Features
    • Clustering
    • Summarization
  • Geographical Constraints - if the engine is country specific, denote which country. If it is for searching geography, mark it as a geographic subject type
  • Defunct - services no longer running or in use

What do you guys think? Of course there may be a better classification of the services, but hopefully this would allow others to actually deem this somewhat appropriate, as this page really falls short of the standards. Josh Froelich 00:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

It would be hard to do this in an objective way, would take a lot of editor time, and might not be all that interesting to the readers. Note that we already have a grouping system in the present article which presumably helps somewhat. The thing you describe above sounds like a very-well-annotated directory, so seems to fall into WP:NOT just as much as a conventional list would. Somehing that's not been attempted yet is to survey actual search engine technology from the viewpoint of how they work. Now *that* would be a real article, in my view. The closest I've seen to that is the PageRank article. EdJohnston 14:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Yah, I have ants in my pants about this article being spammed so much. I really do think it could be made worthwhile, in an abritrary way. I came across an article with exactly the type of format I propose: List_of_compiler-compilers. That it what I am referring to. For one, some of these listed services fall into multiple categories, which would be better represented in the table. Two, the listing would be entirely alphabetical, enabling people to find a service by name and not have to scan each category. Three, they could find a service by one of its attributes, as instead of just listing the general type of the search engine, we could really get in depth and list a ton of factors like index depth, crawling policies obeyed (or ignored), organic versus inorganic, estimated user base, founding date, a link to the parent company, whether its multi lingual, etc. These are all valuable pieces of info that would lend credibility to this sad state of an article. Again, only conversing here, not trying to demand anything. Josh Froelich 03:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Search Engines for Kids

I suggest opening a category named "Search Engines for Kids". It's time to group Yahoo! Kids, Ask for Kids and Quintura for Kids services. I have some content to fill it with. KevinLocker 12:47, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Definitions of types

I was considering adding a brief description of each type of search engine to help readers understand the differences. Before I did anything to the article I thought I would propose the content here.

  • General search engines - search many different types of content and fit into several of the categories
  • Open source search engines - engines where offer public access to the source code of the software or meet the definition of open source.
  • Metasearch engines - aggregate the results of one or more search engines. Metasearch engines do not store their own index but rather use the API of other engines to produce results.
  • Clustering search engines - offer clusters of results in addition to a listing of results in an effort to improve the ease of finding information
  • Regional search engines - limit search results to a particular geographical region
  • People search engines - unlike document or web page search engines, people search engines focus on sifting through names of people or other attributes about people
  • Email-based search engines - focus on searching of email
  • Visual search engines - offer a more visual interface to the entering of a search query or the browsing of search results in an effort to ease finding information
  • Answer-based search engines - services which offer manually generated answers to questions, not in the form of search engine results but in the form of a written response.
  • Google-based search engines - search engines based off of the Google search service
  • Yahoo!-based search engines - search engines based off of the Yahoo! search service
  • Windows-Live-based search engines - search engines based off of the Windows Live search service
  • Job search engines - search engines devoted to searching job listings
  • Blog search engines - search engines devoted to searching blogs, articles, and RSS feeds
  • News search engines - search engines devoted primarily to identifying and retrieving news articles, typically recent articles
  • Multimedia search engines - for searching video, audio, and other forms of multimedia
  • BitTorrent search engines - for searching BitTorrent listings which contain several types files
  • Accountancy search engines
  • Medical search engines
  • Local search engines - search engines which constrain results to those within a certain proximity of the searcher
  • Property search engines - for searching property listings
  • Business search engines - for searching business listings
  • Comparison shopping search engines - for searching merchandise
  • Charity search engines - for finding charitable organizations
  • Geographic search engines - see Regional search engines
  • Defunct search engines - search engines that are no longer in use or available

I know the definitions can be improved, but what do you think about the idea? Josh Froelich 23:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

There may be ways of improving the present article, but these descriptions are kind of obvious from each section title. Let's see if anyone else wants to comment. EdJohnston 01:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Search engine definitions

I thought this would be interested for someone to comment upon. Sorry if it is not applicable, but I think it can be used as support for various arguments. The list came from a Google search. Josh Froelich 01:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Internet search engines (eg Google, AltaVista) help users find web pages on a given subject. The search engines maintain databases of web sites and use programs (often referred to as "spiders" or "robots") to collect information, which is then indexed by the search engine. Similar services are provided by "directories," which maintain ordered lists of websites, eg Yahoo! [3]
  • Software that enables users to search the Internet using keywords. Examples of well known services of this type are AltaVista and Google!. For more information consult our Internet Reference section. [4]
  • A program which acts as a card catalog for the Internet. Search engines attempt to index and locate desired information by searching for keywords in which a user specifies. The method for finding this information is usually done by maintaining indices of Web resources that can be queried for the keywords entered by the user. ... [5]
  • A tool or program which allows keyword searching for relevant sites or information on the Internet. General and topic-specific search engines are prevalent today, for example, Education World, WebCrawler, Infoseek, Lycos, and Yahoo are examples of search engines. [6]
  • the software used to retrieve information from a database or from the Internet (eg, the WebLUIS catalog or Yahoo!). A search engine generally includes features such as Boolean operators, search fields, display format, etc. [7]
  • A program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. Although search engine is really a general class of programs, the term is often used to specifically describe systems like Alta Vista and Excite that enable users to search for documents on the World Wide Web and USENET newsgroups. [8]
  • A search engine is a searchable online database of internet resources. It has several components: search engine software, spider software, an index (database), and a relevancy algorithm (rules for ranking). The search engine software consists of a server or a collection of servers dedicated to indexing Internet Web pages, storing the results and returning lists of pages to match user queries. The spidering software constantly crawls the Web collecting Web page data for the index. ... [9]
  • This term refers to a program that helps users find information in text-oriented databases. [10]
  • A web-based program that allows users to search and retrieve specific information online. The search engine may search the full text of web documents or a list of keywords, or use librarians who review web documents and index them manually for retrieval. [11]
  • A computer program that electronically searches the contents of a database to locate specific information. [12]
  • Computer software program designed to help users of the Internet locate information on the World Wide Web. It collects and indexes Internet resources ( Web pages, Usenet Newsgroups, programs, images, etc. ) and provides a keyword search system allowing the user to identify and retrieve resources. There are many search engines available and each is different in their scope, search protocols, and appearance. Some common search engines are: Alta Vista, Google, Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, and HotBot. [13]
  • software that searches for specific information or files on the Internet using search criteria that you enter. [14]
  • A web search tool that automatically visits websites (using crawlers), records and indexes them within its database, and generates results based on a user's search criteria. Submitting a website to a search engine usually requires just the page URL (and often an e-mail address) and optimisation techniques are essential for a website to be indexed and ranked appropriately by search engines. Best examples of a search engine are AltaVista, Google and Lycos [15]
  • A software that searches for information and returns sites which provide that information. Examples of search engines are AltaVista, Google, Hotbot etc. [16]
  • A directory of Internet content. If you're looking for specific information on the WWW, a search engine can list Web sites at which you'll likely find that information. Popular search engines include Excite, Snap, Yahoo, and Infoseek. [17]
  • A program that acts as a catalog for the Internet. Using keywords, search engines to help a user locate their desired information. Examples: Yahoo, Google, Overture, Alta Vista, Lycos, and Excite. Up Serving: The real-time, controlled distribution of advertising creative to publisher web sites. [18]
  • a program that searches for a specific word or groups of words within a Web page and creates a list of the Web pages that contain the specified word(s). Google, Dogpile, Ask Jeeves, and Alta Vista are examples of popular search engines. [19]
  • A (usually web-based) system for searching the information available on the Web. Some search engines work by automatically searching the contents of other systems and creating a database of the results. other search engines contains only material manually approved for inclusion in a database, and some combine the two approaches. [20]
  1. A program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. [21]
  • specialized software, such as AltaVista and Yahoo, that lets WWW browser users search for information on the Web by using keywords, phrases, and boolean logic. Different search engines have different ways of categorizing and indexing information. Search engines are accessed by typing in the URL of that engine or using a browser's compilation of search engines in its Internet search function. [22]
  • Any service generally designed to allow users to search the web or a specialized database of information. Web search engines generally have paid listings and organic listings. Organic listings typically come from crawling the web, though often human-powered directory listings are also optionally offered. [23]
  • An computerized index of the web pages; creating a searchable database. Example are AltaVista, Google [24]
  • A directory of websites that allow visitors to search for information based on a keyword or keyword phrase that is entered. There are five types of search engines – Pay-Per-Click, Paid-Inclusion, Organic, Algorithmic and Comparison-Shopping.[25]
  • Is a database of web sites that is ranked according to the computerized criteria that the programmers decide upon called an algorithm. Various search engines determine ranking on their own different factors of importance or relevancy. For the last few years the Google search engine was the most popular search engine supplying the search results for Yahoo and to a lesser extent MSN and AOL. ...[26]
  • A Web site that employs bots (spiders, robots, crawlers) to search the Web. Search engines take the information gathered by its robots and use it to create a searchable index of the Internet. There are many different web search engines that you can use to do a search. Some of the most popular ones are Google, AltaVista, AllTheWeb and Excite. [27]
  • a computer program that retrieves documents or files or data from a database or from a computer network (especially from the internet) [28]

I have not visited all these sources, but it serves as a good starting point. Let's say that if it does not meet at least one of these definitions, it should not be so easy to consider it a search engine?

[edit] Doodle : desktop search engine for Linux

I was doing some research on Desktop Search engine and came across Doodle (http://gnunet.org/doodle/) which is not include. Maybe a suggestion to include this ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.66.120.91 (talk) 15:53, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

If it has a Wikipedia page, it can be included. However, as I see it does not, it would need one of those first before it could safely be put into the list. g026r 16:39, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] adding direct links next to wiki links?

Should links to websites be added next to wikis, something like

or

207.229.174.119 03:13, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

By requiring the entries to be article names, we reduce the spam potential of this list. Your change would have no benefit that I can see. EdJohnston 05:20, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Another Search Engine

http://www.mugle.co.uk - UK based music search engine for concert tickets, gigs etc. Indexes major ticket vendors. Also wiki'd at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mugle —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Th3one23 (talk • contribs) 21:14, 17 April 2007 (UTC). --Th3one23 21:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Please add Shopwiki. Funtick 17:47, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Redirects

In order to keep this list under some semblance of control, I've been removing redirects from the list. For example, Google Blog Search does not have its own article, so it's not on the list. However, several redirects I recently removed were quickly re-added without comment. It would be nice if we could reach consensus on this issue. Does anybody else have thoughts on the subject? - EurekaLott 06:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Can you make a list of the Wikipedia redirects currently in the list? If this is to be the new policy, we'd all have to understand it. Also is the number of redirects expanding over time? I suppose you could just click on every entry in the list and see if a redirect occurs. In a few cases the product's name has changed but our article has kept the old name. E.g. Yahooligans should be renamed to Yahoo! Kids; we should not count that as a redirect. If you disallow redirects, you would be saying that there needs to be a complete free-standing Wikipedia article for every search engine that we include in the list. I can see the argument for that, but I'd like to know how much the list would change under that rule. EdJohnston 15:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Here are the redirects, minus those with simple capitalization changes, like WestLaw to Westlaw or .com versions of the name, like CareerBuilder.com to CareerBuilder. Most of them can be fixed by simply pointing to the new name.
I'm not looking to get rid of redirects because they're redirects. I merely hope to avoid having multiple links to the same page under different names. For example, look at all the redirects that point to the List of Google products. We certainly don't want all of those cluttering up the list. Perhaps we shouldn't worry about redirects and simply say no duplicates. - EurekaLott 02:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Redirects

Oops - I added targ8 to the list before reading the discussion. Sorry for hassle. Do you think it adds to the search community?

[edit] Mindbreeze Enterprise Search / Mindbreeze Desktop Search

Could someone add those two search engines? http://www.mindbreeze.com —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.117.100.93 (talk) 20:21, August 22, 2007 (UTC)

Per the local convention, it can't be added here unless there is a Mindbreeze article. EdJohnston 20:34, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Wikia Search

Do you think it's legitimate that Wikia Search has a link on the Open Source Search Engines section? It's a development project without any actual search engine. I understand that Jimmy is the founder of Wikia and all but I don't think we'd do the same for competitors like Powerset. Edits involving powerset seem to get quickly reverted (and rightfully so because the public hasn't actually seen the product yet!). --Searchmaven 18:55, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Your objection is valid. I think Search Wikia only deserves mention here because there is genuine buzz about it. I would listen to the views of other editors who think it doesn't belong here. EdJohnston 19:00, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

This is such a partial list because times have moved on since it was started that it really has no encyclopedic value and should be merged into search engine. Examples of missing entries are whois entries (domain name search), wikipedia search and hundreds more. This article was valid a few years but is now not. What do others think. Thanks, SqueakBox 19:35, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

No. Mainly because this is NOT a list of search engines. It includes various websites/portals many of which use the same search engine to do the actual indexing and searching. For a programmer looking for a search engine to incorporate on a website or to integrate into an enterprise search application etc this list is useless. On the other hand a list of search engines would be useful on that page Ray3055 (talk) 18:19, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Page description

I am adding this to the top of the article to relace the "this is a list of search engines"

I think this more accurately describes the current state of this page, but feel free to edit/add to cover anything I missed. I note that the need for a definition has been raised before, and also note that the list is specifically for items that have a Wikipedia entry rather than be a true list of available search engines. As a programmer maybe I am biased but this is the definition that I understand to be true:

  • Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (5th ed) - Computing: A program which searches for and identifies specified items in a database or network, esp. the Internet.

Note that it refers to a PROGRAM not an application that uses a search engine. It seems to me the loose usage here of 'engine' is similar to the widespread use of the word 'database' to mean a DBMS (like SQL server). I would like to see a 'list of search engines'(as defined by the OED) but then this list will need to be split up into more specific lists. Ray3055 (talk) 13:30, 13 December 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Where's Magellan?

Magellan was one of the earliest. Where is it? --Scottandrewhutchins (talk) 20:52, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Magellan and many other search engines, both current and historic (Strix, Muscat etc) are missing because nobody has yet written a Wikipedia article for them. Unfortunately red links get wiped out on this page, so you would need to start an article to get it on this list. My interest is also early search engines and I have started the MEDLARS page. Ray3055 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 09:51, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
Seems I was wrong. I found the article under Lotus Magellan, I have now added it to the defunct engine section. Ray3055 (talk) 10:49, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I could be mistaken, but that looks like a different Magellan. - Eureka Lott 15:19, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
You are correct. See http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2175241 seems Magellan (web search engine) was taken over by Excite and finally 'died' in 2001. Lotus Magellan was a file search program.Ray3055 (talk) 15:47, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Contents list

Seems to me the contents list could do with putting in alphabetical order and also having sub-categories. Any objections to major categories WWW and non-Web/other for example and then putting all the vertical search and 'general search engines' under WWW; and Open source, Enterprise Search and Desktop search etc under non-Web/other? These are just initial thoughts - other suggestions welcome. Seems also that the Vendor list (or simplified version) on Enterprise search could be moved to here also, so that article can be expanded properly and not be just a list.Ray3055 (talk) 11:15, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

The article has been heavily edited over time. You'd need to convince people that your new category system was better. If you wish to alphabetize within the existing sections, I doubt that anyone would object. I see that you have already brought some material over here from Enterprise search. Since what you are adding seems to have a different format than what's already here (you have multiple lines for a given company) it seems possible that other companies already here may start trying to expand their entries as well. This would not necessarily be a good thing. If a company has more than one search offering, why can't that be handled within our existing article about that company? EdJohnston (talk) 13:43, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I reformatted the Enterprise Search to give one line per company, there is a problem though that Hummingbird for example is a subsidiary of OpenText although I have put it on the same line - some may prefer it to be given a line of its own. A more worrying problem of this list which is 'growing like Topsy' is that currently it has sections for "Google based search engines" and "Yahoo based search engines", which could lead other search engine software companies (Autonomy, Endeca etc) to start adding all the websites of companies with Wikipedia articles that have their search engine to provide results, for example United States Environmental Protection Agency uses the Northern Light search engine to provide results and there are dozens of similar examples. Ray3055 (talk) 00:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
It sounds you have looked into this issue a fair amount. If you have a reform plan to offer, please give us a sketch of how you would rearrange things so people are not too shocked. EdJohnston (talk) 05:10, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I moved over the Search Appliances section from the Enterprise Search page and added it as a sub-section of Enterprise search so that it appears as a sub-category of Enterprise search in the Contents list, hope that's Ok with all; there is just an article for Google at the moment although there are others on the market; if I get time I'll start an article for Thunderstone's search appliance also, but at the moment I have commented it out to avoid a redlink.Ray3055 (talk) 20:20, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
In your view, a search appliance is a piece of software sold together with a dedicated computer? We should be prepared to see lots of others try to get into this category, if it's kept as a category. An alternative might be to keep the Google Search Appliance somewhere in the articles that talk about Google. I wonder if there is actually some material on the web about search appliances as a topic. It is tempting to think of it as a cute packaging idea from Google, though others may have more specific knowledge. EdJohnston (talk) 02:39, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Actually Ed I am not so sure that the List of Google products#Hardware products link I used would count as a Wikipedia article - the whole page looks to me like a link-farm to various Google sites - what do you think? I found a page Search appliance but this just talks about Google Search Appliances in a very vague way and ignores others and is far from a proper description of what an Appliance or indeed a Search Appliance is, seems more like yet another Google advert Ray3055 (talk) 15:22, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Since you're one of the people who is trying to organize the material, perhaps you can advise on whether we need any new full-text articles. I personally don't think we cover search-engine technology very well. My own work on this list is mostly to keep out spam. EdJohnston (talk)

I have added some 7-10 new search engine names under medical search engines.

[edit] suggestion for updation of medical search engine list

  • Medstory [bought by Microsoft]
  • Healthline [distribution agreement with Aetna , AOL, Ask.com]
  • Kosmix RightHealth
  • Healia [bought by Meredith Corp.]
  • Google Health [ to be launched in Spring 2008]
  • CurbsideMD [ owned by Praxeon ] - Evidence-based answers to real-medical questions
  • Aetna
  • RevolutionHealth [owned by AOL]
  • TauMed
  • HealthExcite
  • MedlinePlus
  • CognitionSearch
  • GenieKnows
  • MEDgle
  • ReleMed
  • MedWhat
  • Diagnosaurus
  • GoPubMed —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iagent (talk • contribs) 06:55, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Per WP:EL and how this page is intended, there should only links to actual pages (i.e., no "red-links"). Also, I think there should only be links to pages about search engines, not things of same name or a general company or site that happens to have some sort of search capability unless that specific search is highlighted in the WP page. DMacks (talk) 07:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A search engine is not a website or database

Seriously some of the things that people think are search engines are ridiculous. For example, the specialist 'search engines' that are listed. I use some of them all the time, but they are not search engines. They USE a search engine, but they themselves are NOT search engines.

Maybe this analogy will help people to understand...

The Honda V-Tec 2.2 engine is used in several models of Honda motor vehicles (e.g. Prelude, Integra, Accord). Each of these models of cars are different from each other, but what drives them is not the 'Prelude' engine, or the 'Integra' engine. No what drives them is the Honda V-Tec engine.

Websites are the same. They might store different information but their search functions are driven by a search engine. This might have been especially developed for the website, but the much more likely scenario is that the website owner purchased and adapted a commercial website engine. This might be Google's service, or it might be the purchase of a product like the Zoom Search Engine (Wrensoft) that is then implemented and adapted to their website.

So lets re-examine all these supposed search engines listed here and identify those that are truly a 'search engine' as opposed to those that use a search engine.

Cheers, Sim —Preceding unsigned comment added by SimParadox (talk • contribs) 03:14, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Edit: P.S. An example of what I am talking about is seen in the first post in this discussion. The author even states that it is a google-based search engine. Please see the difference: The search engine is Google, mozbot.com is a search site not a search engine. Start up a list of 'Search Sites' if you like, but please lets keep 'Search Engines' restricted to only those things that are actually search engines. Thanks. SimParadox (talk) 03:25, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Vertical Search Engine Category?

I understand that this is the proper way to ask for one of my company's websites to be included in a wikipedia page. My company owns and operates several vertical search engines. Would it be possible to add a category for vertical search engines and add http://search.fivemushrooms.com (Five Mushrooms Food Search Engine) to it? Five mushrooms falls into the category of "portal" as described in the vertical search page of Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.62.161.76 (talk) 17:45, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I suppose you can add the category if you want, but this list should only be for search engines that are documented >in< wikipedia. As in, your search engine must have its own page (and hopefully one that's been around a little while). If your search engine happens to have had 3rd party notability confirmation (as in some news outlet or trade magazine) of the notability of your search engine, then it shouldn't be too hard to be included. However, we also generally try to discourage self promotion. Of course, drawing the line as to what's more self promotion and what "ought" to be included in a page is a very hard task.. Anyways.. I see that neither Five Mushrooms nor Five Mushrooms Food Search Engine link to an article, so you're in for an uphill battle. Root4(one) 22:09, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Forty candidates for addition

From the article "Web search engine", I selected "What links here", and for each listed page which I selected, I read the beginning of the article and selected "What links here" to see whether List of search engines was included. In the case of candidates for addition to the article "List of search engines", in most cases I copied the first sentence and linked the name of the article. Here are 40 candidates.

  • EarthFrisk.org is a self-described "Meta-Social-Hybrid Search Engine."
  • Become.com is a product price comparison service and discovery shopping search engine with a mission to help shoppers make ideal buying decisions.
  • Multisearch is a multi tasking search engine which includes both search engines and metasearch engines characteristics with additional capability of retrivel of search rsult sets that were previously classified by users.
  • Live Search Academic is a Web search engine for scholarly literature.
  • Wikiwix is a multilingual Web search engine operated independently from Wikimedia.
  • Finder-Spyder is a popular, fictional, stand-in Web search engine, similar to Morley cigarettes, Gannon Car Rentals, and Heisler Beer.
  • CiteSeer is a public search engine and digital library for scientific and academic papers.
  • mozDex is a search engine that is built on FOSS technologies like Nutch
  • SmealSearch (now BizSeer) is a web portal, search engine and digital library for academic business documents that was originally hosted at the defunct eBusiness Research Center at the Pennsylvania State University.
  • GoHook is a crawler-based search engine.
  • elgooG (Google spelled backwards) is a mirror image of the Google search engine.
  • Walhello is a spider based search engine developed in the Netherlands for the whole Internet.
  • LawMoose launched in September, 2000, is believed to have been the first U.S. regional legal search engine operating its own independent web crawler.
  • Wazap! is a vertical search engine, video game database and social networking site to distribute gaming news, rankings, cheats, downloads and reviews.
  • Podscope was the first consumer search engine to create a 'spoken word index' for podcasts.
  • Business.com is a business-related Internet search engine and web directory.
  • Phynd is a LAN-indexing search engine used to facilitate peer-to-peer filesharing over a local area network.
  • Poliqarp is an open source search engine designed to process the Polish Corpus created at the Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Sciences.
  • 4INFO is an SMS and mobile search engine that works with on most major US wireless carriers.
  • Go10000.com is a travel vertical or meta search engine based in Beijing, China.
  • Kelforum is a search engine designed to test a new technology that creates real-time search engines for a very low cost.
  • Dulance was a price engine that specialized in searching for hard-to-find products often sold by small independent online retailers (“The Long Tail”).
  • The Exploit Submission Wizard is an automated search engine submission tool developed by Exploit Information Technology Ltd. for the Microsoft Windows platform.
  • Upsnap is synonymous with mobile search.
  • HubMed is an alternative, third-party interface to PubMed, the database of biomedical literature produced by the National Library of Medicine.
  • WORKink is Canada's largest national website for job seekers with disabilities, entrepreneurs with disabilities, employers and service providers.
  • Domania is an Internet search engine that allows users to search through 28 million Comparables or "sold home prices" dating back to 1987 at no cost.
  • Swoogle is a search engine for Semantic Web documents, terms and data found on the Web.
  • SmartMatch is a proprietary intelligent search engine that searches résumés and other information about job applicants and matches that information with job descriptions [1].
  • Twease is an open source biomedical web search engine at www.twease.org which searches MEDLINE.
  • Alleba is a Philippine search engine.
  • BlogScope is a search engine for the blogosphere with advanced analysis and visualization technology.
  • eTBLAST is a text similarity search engine currently offering access to the MEDLINE database, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) CRISP database, the Institute of Physics (IOP) database, and the NASA technical reports database.
  • Archie is a tool for indexing FTP archives, allowing people to find specific files. It is considered to be the first Internet search engine.
  • Grub (search engine) Grub is an open source distributed search crawler platform.
  • agrep agrep is also the search engine in the indexer program GLIMPSE.
  • Jughead (search engine) Jughead is a search engine system for the Gopher protocol.
  • Scour Inc. was a search engine for multimedia on the Internet, and provided Scour Exchange, an early peer-to-peer file exchange service.
  • astalavista.box.sk was one of the first search engines for computer security related information started in 1994.
  • Veronica (computer) Veronica is a search engine system for the Gopher protocol, developed in 1992 by Steven Foster and Fred Barrie at the University of Nevada, Reno.

-- Wavelength (talk) 16:22, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I have found, after closer scrutiny, that six of these are listed on List of search engines.

That leaves thirty-four.

I have edited Multisearch so that the first sentence now is:

  • Multisearch is a multitasking search engine which includes both search engine and metasearch engine characteristics with additional capability of retrieval of search result sets that were previously classified by users.

Archie is disambiguated to Archie search engine.

-- Wavelength (talk) 15:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] MonsterCrawler.com

Can we add Monster Crawler to the meta-search engine list?

About Monster Crawler combines the power of all the leading search engines together in one search box to deliver the best combined results. This is what we call metasearch. The process is more efficient and yields many more relevant results.

Monster Crawler provides an easy way to search more of the Web by harnessing the collective power of the most popular engines. The Internet is an enormous and constantly changing medium, making it impossible for any single engine to reach the entire Web. Using our algorithmic metasearch technology, Monster Crawler takes results from the leading search engines (Yahoo Search!, Google, MSN, Ask), eliminates the duplicates and delivers you the most comprehensive set of results. You benefit by obtaining a quicker, more accurate set of results to your query.

Monster Crawler's algorithmic metasearch technology blends and ranks the results derived from each of the separate engines based on the specific terms you type. If, for example, you type the words "computer prices", the resulting search will include many commercial Web pages containing information on businesses offering computers for sale. If, on the other hand, you type the words "computer technology", your results will be weighted toward articles, information and other research about computers. Monster Crawler also provides multimedia results including images, audio, video, news, and local information.


History Metasearch engine Monster Crawler was founded by several Southern Illinois University graduates in 1999. It quickly grew a following among internet users who enjoyed the capability to query multiple search engines with just one click. Monster Crawler grew rapidly among the local college and St. Louis Midwest markets. Monster Crawler now attracts a worldwide market and has one of the highest retention rates in the industry with over 50% of our users visiting 30 or more times per month. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.244.254.227 (talk) 22:27, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 3dsn.com

Can we add 3dsn.com to Media search engines?

With database of hundreds of thousands 3D and creative graphics item links, 3DSN (3D Search Network) gives user the ability to quickly and easily locate right graphics content at right online resources and for the right price (or for free if any).

The ability to run multiple search sessions within one browser window makes search process more intuitive. Open one more browser window and you will get 10 search sessions (unlike Google standard search which offers one search session per browser window).

There is another cool feature at 3DSN: 'My Searches' catalog. User may run as many searches as he likes and store selected links in 'My Searches' catalog. Once registered, user may save 'My Searches' catalog content for future use.

There is even more. Users now have the ability to rate, comment and report content. Any item you like/dislike could be commented and/or rated. The stuff you feel is distributed illegally could be reported. So do not put your project in jeopardy when you are planning to purchase 3D creative content online, - check at 3DSN.com first, - the content may be reported!

Slozovsk (talk) 22:30, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

You don't have to ask here--anyone can edit the List of search engines page to add anything to any section. Note that by editorial consensus, the only things that should be listed are existing Wikipedia pages. DMacks (talk) 22:52, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
There is no "Edit this page" tab for this page, though I'm logged in. - This page is currently semi-protected. I can edit other pages, but not that :-( Slozovsk (talk) 23:56, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
D'oh...looks like we had a spam problem on the page. Let us know when there is a viable 3dsn.com page (or whatever the page is called) and someone will add the link for you. DMacks (talk) 15:54, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] isitopen.com - Can we add this search engine to the sub-headding (Question and answer)

Can we add this search engine to the sub-headding (Question and answer) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thomas1189 (talk • contribs) 18:56, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Not unless and until it has its own viable page existing. DMacks (talk) 19:35, 10 June 2008 (UTC)