DEC's Alta Vista is the most powerful and comprehensive full-text search system, often generating five to ten times as many matching documents as other engines. The default Simple Search is easy to use, but most users will want to learn the Advanced Search mode, which supports Boolean operators and case-sensitive and proximity searches. Excite is one of the oldest search engines and has fallen behind competitors. Its quirky interface is annoying, and users cannot modify the original query from the results page. WebCrawler is adequate but not especially powerful.
Users can search only for words in the category name or site summary.
This article, while just slightly dated, provides a more than adequate overview of the most popular Internet search engines. Personally, I think this sort of service represents a future opportunity for librarians to share their expertice with information seekers. There is no reason why the sort of service represented here could not be expanded and improved to become a more comprehensive service. The linked abstracts and papers describe all aspects of World Wide Web developement in a library setting. We found that each can find an enormous amount of information, but a few are clearly superior in the way they home in on the most relevant information and in the interface they offer.