The information provided here has been drawn from my experiences in using these tools, and from the help screens of the search tools themselves.
More details are available from the help provided by each of the search tools.
I've also created an accompanying Summary Chart that gives very brief clues to using the tools There are a couple of ways you might want to use this page and the chart. A note on searching vs. browsing If you are looking for general information, or information on a broad topic, you should consider using the browsable subject categories provided by the search engines. All the tools listed here provide browsable categories. Alta Vista also provides what it calls zones, which sometimes allow searches on topical material, and in other cases provide specially written material on a topic. WebCrawler Click in the search box, type in the term or terms you want to search, and click on the Search key.