FAVORITE SITES

Search Engines                  Top Choices                        Stongly Consider                         Other Choices

The sites below are "major" in the sense that they either still receive significant amounts of traffic or they've earned a reputation in the past that still causes some people to consider them to be important. For various reasons explained below, they are not among our top search choices. However, certainly feel free to try them. They could turn out to be top choices for you.

AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com

AltaVista opened in December 1995 and for several years was the "Google" of its day, in terms of providing relevant results and having a loyal group of users that loved the service.

Sadly, an attempt to turn AltaVista into a portal site in 1998 saw the company lose track of the importance of search. Over time, relevancy dropped, as did the freshness of AltaVista's listings and the crawler's coverage of the web.

Today, AltaVista is once again focused on search. Results come from Yahoo, and tabs above the search box let you go beyond web search to find images, MP3/Audio, Video, human category listings and news results. If you want a lighter-feel than Yahoo but to still have Yahoo's results, AltaVista is worth considering.

AltaVista was originally owned by Digital, then taken over by Compaq, when that company purchased Digital in 1998. AltaVista was later spun off into a private company, controlled by CMGI. Overture purchasing the search engine in April 2003, then it later became part of Yahoo when Yahoo bought Overture.

Gigablast
http://www.gigablast.com

Compared to Google, Yahoo or even Teoma, Gigablast has a tiny index of the web. However, the service is constantly gaining new and interesting features. Give it a whirl, if you want to try something experimental yet dependable. Read more about Gigablast in this recent interview from our SearchDay newsletter.

LookSmart
http://www.looksmart.com

LookSmart is primarily a human-compiled directory of web sites. It gathers its listings in two ways. Commercial sites pay to be listed in its commercial categories, making the service very much like an electronic "Yellow Pages." However, volunteer editors at the LookSmart-owned Zeal directory also catalog sites into non-commercial categories for free. Though Zeal is a separate web site, its listings are integrated into LookSmart's results.

LookSmart launched independently in October 1996, was backed by Reader's Digest for about a year, and then company executives bought back control of the service.

LookSmart also bought the WiseNut crawler-based search engine in April 2002. WiseNut's are offered through the LookSmart via its Web tab above the search box. Unlike its competitors, the WiseNut crawler has often been out of date, sometimes for months at a time.

Finally, the real gem at LookSmart can be found via its Articles tab. That provides access to content from thousands of periodicals.

Getting Listed: Read the Submitting To LookSmart section of Search Engine Watch's Essentials Of Search Engine Submission guide for more information on being included in its free non-commercial listings. See the LookSmart Paid Listings section for information about cost-per-click commercial listings.

Search Engine Watch members have access to the How LookSmart Works page, which has in-depth coverage of how LookSmart gathers listings.

Lycos
http://www.lycos.com

Lycos is one of the oldest search engines on the web, launched in 1994. It ceased crawling the web for its own listings in April 1999 and instead provides access to human-powered results from LookSmart for popular queries and crawler-based results from Yahoo for others.

"Fast Forward" lets you see search results in one side of your screen and the actual pages listed in another. Relevant categories of human-compiled information from the Open Directory appear at the bottom of the search results page.

Lycos is owned by Terra Lycos, a company formed with Lycos and Terra Networks merged in October 2000. Terra Lycos also owns the HotBot search engine described above.

Getting Listed: For the main editorial listings at Lycos, you need to be listed with AllTheWeb.com, which is described above on this page. Paid listings come from Overture, described below, and additional paid listings come from Terra Lycos's own program, as described in this article.

Search Engine Watch members have access to the How Lycos Works page, which provides in-depth coverage of how Lycos integrates listings from its search providers.

MSN Search
http://search.msn.com

Formerly one of Search Engine Watch's top choices, MSN Search is definitely one to watch. The service was previously powered by LookSmart results and gained top marks for having its own team of editors that monitored the most popular searches being performed to hand-pick sites believed to be the most relevant. The system worked well.

Today, MSN Search is in transition. It provides access to Yahoo listings but not as much functionality in terms of other types of searches that you'll find at Yahoo itself. However, MSN is developing its own crawler-based technology and planning other changes that should revitalize the service in later 2004.

Getting Listed: You need to be listed with Yahoo and Overture, which are described further above on this page.

Search Engine Watch members have access to the How MSN Search Works page, which provides in-depth coverage of how MSN integrates listings from its search providers and its own editors.

Netscape Search
http://search.netscape.com

Owned by AOL Time Warner, Netscape Search uses Google for its main listings, just as does AOL's other major search site, AOL Search. So why use Netscape Search rather than Google? Unlike with AOL Search, there's no compelling reason to consider it. The main difference between Netscape Search and Google is that Netscape Search will list some of Netscape's own content at the top of its results. Netscape also has a completely different look and feel than Google. If you like either of these reasons, then try Netscape Search. Otherwise, you're probably better off just searching at Google.

Getting Listed: Netscape essentially duplicates the editorial and ad listings that are shown on Google, so you need to be listed with Google in one of these ways, as described above on this page.

Open Directory
http://dmoz.org/

The Open Directory uses volunteer editors to catalog the web. Formerly known as NewHoo, it was launched in June 1998. It was acquired by AOL Time Warner-owned Netscape in November 1998, and the company pledged that anyone would be able to use information from the directory through an open license arrangement.

While you can search at the Open Directory site itself, this is not recommended. The site has no "backup" results that kick in should there not be a match in the human-compiled database. In addition, the ranking of sites during keyword searching is poor, while alphabetical ordering is used when you choose to "browse" categories by topic.

Instead, to scan the valuable information compiled by the Open Directory, consider using the version offered by Google, the Google Directory. Here, keyword searching uses Google's refined relevancy algorithms and makes use of link analysis to better propel good pages from the human database to the top. In addition, when viewing sites by category, they will be listed in PageRank order, which means the most popular sites based on analyzing links from across the web will be listed first.

Getting Listed: Read the Submitting To The Open Directory section of Search Engine Watch's Essentials Of Search Engine Submission guide for more information.

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