Learning Information Literacy Online @UH > Search Engines and Search Directories

My LILO Projects LILO Tutorial 1. The Research Process 2. Your Assignment 3. Research Strategy 4. Conduct the Search Search Books Periodical Indexes The World Wide Web Search Engines and Search Directories What About Wikipedia? Other Wikis? 5. Evaluate 6. Synthesis My LILO Journal MY LILO TOOLS What is LILO? LILO Home

Search Engines and Search Directories

How can you find reliable Web sites suitable for academic research from among billions of Web pages?

First, get familiar with some of the Web's leading search engines. Almost everyone is familiar with Google, but try some of the other search engines too.

The Web changes constantly and the quantity and quality of search engines change with it.

Web sites like Search Engine Showdown were created by information scientists to monitor the fast-paced search engine industry. They compare and contrast various search engines, and offer tips and tricks for using each effectively.

Librarians can also recommend good search engines and ways to efficiently use them. Try finding some of the words you entered in previous pages of LILO (displayed below) in a search engine.

Your Concepts:
Your Synonyms:
Your Word Variations:
Your Truncated Terms:
Your Terms with Quotation Marks:
Your Search Strings Created with the Keyword Search Builder:

4.10 Follow the link to one of the search engine links above and search for your topic. List the title and URL ("Uniform Resource Locator," or Web address) of one promising Web page you find.

4.11 What is your favorite search engine? Compare it with another search engine you have used (be sure to identify this other search engine by name in your answer). Explain what your preferred engine does that the competitor engine does not do.

4.12 Look at the "advanced search" display of your favorite search engine. What does it allow you to do that the ordinary default search display does not?