Specialty Search Engines

I. Why specialty search engines? 

	Traditional search engines index many, many Web pages: Google, the largest of these search engines, indexes over 4 billion pages, far fewer than the estimated 10 billion pages in existence. See Search Engine Sizes at http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156481.
	If you search these tools using 1-2 search terms (like most searchers do), you will get too many results, and many of these results will use your search terms in ways that you did not intend.  banking is a financial term is something airplanes do has application to civil engineering; river banks

You have basically two options here:  learn to search using more sophisticated search syntax, using AND, OR, NOT, +, -, parentheses, field searching, etc.  use search engines focused on your subject area, where your search terms are more likely to have the meanings you intend them to have

II. Examples of specialty search engines

Subject-Specific Specialty Search Engines

ArtNet, http://www.artnet.com/ Biology Browser, http://www.biologybrowser.org/  CigarSearch, http://www.cigarsearch.com/ Athenus: Engineering & Science Search, http://www.athenus.com  FindLaw, http://findlaw.com/ FirstGov, http://firstgov.gov (U.S. government) GrapeSeek, http://www.grapeseek.com/ Inomics: The Internet Site for Economists http://www.inomics.com/cgi/show Math Forum: Search for Math on the Internet, http://www.mathsearch.com/grepform.html MedWorld: MEDBOT Searching Tool, http://www-med.stanford.edu/medworld/medbot/

ParaSeek.com: The Paranormal Search Engine, http://www.paraseek.com/ Political Information, http://www.politicalinformation.com/ Religion Explorer, http://www.religionexplorer.com/  Science.gov, http://www.science.gov/  Sikh-Seek, http://www.sikhseek.com/ Social Work Search, http://www.socialworksearch.com/  SocioWeb, http://www.socioweb.com/~markbl/socioweb/ TaxTopic.com, http://www.taxtopic.com/ WWWomen.com: The Premier Search Directory for Women Online, http://wwwomen.com/

Medium-Specific Search Engines

AudioFind, http://www.audiofind.com/  Ditto, for images, http://www.ditto.com/ FindSounds, http://www.findsounds.com/  History and Politics Out Loud: A Searchable Archive of Politically Significant Audio Materials, http://www.hpol.org/

Music Search, http://www.musicsearch.com/ (can look for only MP3 & audio)  Newsknife, http://www.newsknife.com/  Picsearch, http://www.picsearch.com/ XRefer, http://www.xrefer.com/ (reference sources: encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc.)

Language-Specific Search Engines

	Spanish Language Search Engines, http://www.fsu.edu/~modlang/sp-cai/coursesite/SearchEngines.htm
	Foreign Language Internet Search Engines, http://www.bizforms.com/search.htm
	AllSearchEngines.com, http://allsearchengines.com/foreign.html

Regional Search Engines

	Search Engine Colossus: International Directory of Search Engines, http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/
	Regional Search Engines, http://www.ntu.edu.sg/lib/search/specialframe.htm
	Country Specific Search Engines, http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Internet/searchcountry.html
	Find-It, http://find-it.state.nm.us/ (searches all New Mexico state, city, county, and local government Web sites)
	EuroFerret, http://www.euroferret.com/
	123India.com, http://www.123india.com

Purpose-Specific Search Engines

	SciQuest, devoted to helping scientists locate laboratory supplies and equipment, http://search.sciquest.com/search/SearchRouter/MainSearch?Tmstmp=49766
	HumorSearch, http://www.humorsearch.com/
	Tech-Seek: Technical Tutorial Search Engine - http://www.tech-seek.com/
	BookFinder, http://www.bookfinder.com/
	Cliche Finder, http://www.westegg.com/cliche/
	DIY Search, http://www.diysearch.com/ (for do-it-yourselfers)
	3D Model Search Engine, http://shape.cs.princeton.edu/search.html

III. How to find specialty search engines 

	Search Engine Watch: Specialty Search Engines, http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156351
	Collection of Special Search Engines, http://www.leidenuniv.nl/ub/biv/specials.htm
	FinderSeeker: The Search Engine for Search Engines, http://www.finderseeker.com/
	Guides to Specialized Search Engines, http://www.searchability.com/
	Pinakes: A Subject Launchpad, http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html

IV. The "Invisible Web"

What is the "Invisble Web"?  "Traditional" Web search engines cannot get at the contents of all pages on the web, especially those pages that are themselves searchable databases of information.

Some "Invisible Web" sites Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, http://bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp  Find A Grave, http://www.findagrave.com/  Hazardous Chemicals Database, http://ull.chemistry.uakron.edu/erd/  How Stuff Works, http://www.howstuffworks.com/  InfoPlease Almanac, http://www.infoplease.com/ Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/  NIST Chemistry WebBook, http://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry/

How to find "Invisible Web" resources? ProFusion, http://www.profusion.com  CompletePlanet: Discover and Search 103,000 Searchable Databases and Specialty Search Engines, http://www.completeplanet.com/ Gary Price's Direct Search, http://www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htm  Librarians' Index to the Internet, http://www.lii.org Resource Discovery Network - http://www.rdn.ac.uk/ "as close to a search engine for the hidden web as you're likely to find," SearchDay, 4 Dec. 2001 (http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/01/sd1204-rdn.html)  Invisible-Web Net, http://www.invisible-web.net/  The Big Hub - http://www.thebighub.com/ searchable; also includes directory listing of over 3,000 subject specific searchable databases Turbo 10, http://turbo10.com/