Portals, Directories, & Search Engines

Search Engines: Indexing the words on every page in their database, a search engine covers Web pages and can include billions of pages.

Portals: Offer search, directory, and many other general services such as email, free home page building, news, popular topics, etc. Well-known ones include Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN.

Directory Function: A subject directory includes selected Web sites (more often than pages) and classifies them into hierarchical subject categories. Most portals have one and some specialized directories are available by themselves. They do not index every word on every page included.

Use the portals, directories, and search engines for finding the Web site of organizations when you can't guess the URL.

Selected Search Engines:

• Google is a large, very popular search engine
• Yahoo! is another large search engine and a good alternate to Google
• MSN Search is the third major search engine and includes access to the Encarta encyclopedia

• LII (The Librarians' Index to the Internet) is a non-commercial directory
• Infomine is an academic directory from UC-Riverside
  
• Yahoo! Directory is one of the oldest and best known
• Open Directory Project (run by volunteers). Also in use at the Google Directory

• Yahoo! is a portal with a  search engine and directory
• Personalized Google is now available as a portal
• Others include AOL and MSN

Now let's try the