Brief descriptions of the sites listed. References range from the comprehensive to the specific. A good starting place. The Virtual Reference Desk Search Engines Search Engines are used to find other Internet sites and function as indexes to the Web. Search engines are of two types, those that locate material primarily by subject and those that locate sites primarily by keywords that you supply.
Many sites do both.
A new category is called a metasearch engine. Main Page One of the most powerful engines around. Alta Vista is able to search for Web Pages and Usenet newsgroup discussions. Has both a simple and advanced search. Alta Vista is such a powerful search engine that it retrieves more stuff than you might really want to look through.