The search engines below are all
excellent choices to start with when searching for
information.
Google
Voted four times
Most Outstanding Search Engine by Search Engine
Watch readers, Google has a well-deserved reputation as
the top choice for those searching the web. The
crawler-based service provides both comprehensive
coverage of the web along with great relevancy. It's
highly recommended as a first stop in your hunt for
whatever you are looking for.
Google provides the option to find more than web
pages, however. Using on the top of the search box on
the Google home page, you can easily seek out images
from across the web, discussions that are taking place
on Usenet newsgroups, locate news information or perform
product searching. Using the More link provides access
to human-compiled information from the Open Directory
(see below),
catalog searching
and other services.
Google is also known for the wide range of features
it offers, such as cached links that let you "resurrect"
dead pages or see older versions of recently changed
ones. It offers excellent spell checking, easy access to
dictionary definitions, integration of stock quotes,
street maps, telephone numbers and more. See Google's
help
page for an entire rundown on some of these
features. The
Google Toolbar has also won a popular following for
the easy access it provides to Google and its features
directly from the Internet Explorer browser.
In addition to Google's unpaid editorial results, the
company also operates its own advertising programs. The
cost-per-click AdWords program places ads on Google as
well as some of Google's partners. Similarly, Google is
also a provider of unpaid editorial results to some
other search engines. For a list of major partnerships,
see the
Search Providers Chart.
Google was originally a Stanford University project
by students Larry Page and Sergey Brin called BackRub.
By 1998, the name had been changed to Google, and the
project jumped off campus and became the private company
Google. It remains privately held today.
Getting Listed: Read the
Submitting To Google section of Search Engine
Watch's
Essentials Of Search Engine Submission guide for
more about being included in Google's editorial results
and the
Google AdWords section for more about its paid
listings programs.
Search Engine Watch
members have access to the
How Google Works section of the web site, which
provides in-depth coverage of the editorial and paid
listings processes at Google. Learn more about becoming
a member on the
membership information page