In this concluding part on search engine series, we present a status report on major search engines - dead and live. In the fast changing world of Internet where search engines and portals go through rapid and unpredictable life cycle - a headcount once a while is very helpful for keeping one's search arsenal in top gear. Let us not waste time in chasing wrong tools.

Major Search Engines

(In alphabetical order)

Spider Based Search Engines

• AllTheWeb http://www.alltheweb.com 
•  AltaVista http://www.altavista.com
• AOL Search http://search.aol.com/ 
•  Ask Jeeves http://www.askjeeves.com
• Google http://www.google.com
• HotBot http://www.hotbot.com
• Inktomi http://www.inktomi.com
• Lycos http://www.lycos.com
• MSN Search http://search.msn.com
• Netscape Search http://search.netscape.com

Directories

• Britannica http://www.britannica.com/ 
• LookSmart http://www.looksmart.com 
• The Open Directory (Dmoz) http://dmoz.org/
• Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com/

Meta Search Engines

• Dogpile: http://www.dogpile.com
• Excite http://www.excite.com/
• Metacrawler http://www.metacrawler.com
• Webcrawler http://www.webcrawler.com/

Dead or Defunct Search Engines

• Deja.com http://www.deja.com Defunct Usenet search Now replaced by http://groups.google.com/ 
• Direct Hit - http://www.directhit.com Literally dead - does not respond 
• Excite http://www.excite.com/ Defunct, now a meta search engine 
• Magellan - http://www.magellan.com Dead ! literally - does not even respond
• Webcrawler - http://www.webcrawler.com/ Is now a meta-search engine. 
• Northern Light - http://www.northernlight.com/ Publicly defunct as a Web search engine, but still available for paid document searching.
• Infoseek http://www.infoseek.com Defunct, bought by Disney for Go, then abandoned in favor of Overture

Related Links:

• How to find information from Internet - Part II Search Engines - How they work
• A Search Engine for your Website ? Part I
• A Search Engine for your Website ? Part II
• A Search Engine for your Website ? Part III

Source: FAIDA - Newsletter on Business Opportunties from India and Abroad Vol: 3, Issue 20 September 5' 2002

Author : Dr. Amit K. Chatterjee (Amit worked in blue-chip Indian and MNCs for 15 years in various capacities like Research and Information Analysis, Market Development, MIS, R&D Information Systems etc. before starting his e-commerce venture in 1997. The views expressed in this columns are of his own. He may be reached at amit@infobanc.com )