Talk:List of search engines/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about List of search engines. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Tweetscan

Can we add a reference to the Twitter search tool "Tweetscan" ? dave evans (talk) 03:41, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Green Search

Could you add a category for "green search engines" like http://www.gofinditnow.com and http://www.blackle.com Green search engines, some based Google use a black background to cut power use on a CRT monitor. Most offset hosting energy by renewable energy credits.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.120.172.185 (talk) 03:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC).

I propose a suggestion part, here it is for people who are too lazy to clean up the publication for the main page :

So looks like you forgot the following Google based search engine : http://www.mozbot.fr probably only in French, but it got international search options, and it really adds some services to Google! Yes seems to be possible! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.228.137.82 (talk • contribs).

Please consider listing Search Engine Colossus: International Directory of Search Engines http://www.searchenginecolossus.com] in the External links section...although I do not regard anyone as "lazy" :> —The preceding unsigned comment was added by BryanStrome (talk • contribs).

Per long-standing editors' consensus, only search engines that have their own page on Wikipedia are suitable for inclusion on the page here. DMacks 19:50, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

How come no 1banana.com? 98.196.117.157 (talk) 01:03, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Linkspam

Has it occurred to anyone how often anonymous users try to linkspam this page? Isn't that a problem? Maybe this list wasn't such a good idea. --Ardonik 03:46, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)

I'm getting sick of cleaning up after the linkspam here. I have excised ALL external links; from now on, any red link or external link added to this article will be suspect. --Ardonik 19:32, 2004 Aug 4 (UTC)
Removed Wowla external links. Never heard of it before now, doubt I ever will again.
Does a search engine really have to be popular to be listed here, I mean it is a list after all.

Answer: yes. WP:NOT a directory, still less a tool to help webmasters optimise their pagerank. General consensus is that lists like this should contain only those for which Wikipedia articles exist - no weblinks, no redlinks - for the reasons stated above. If you think a particular engine is notable, feel free to make an article on it and link it in the right section. Just zis Guy you know? 17:14, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Ixquick

Ixquick.com calls itself a "metasearch engine" and has been around for several years - I think it needs to be added to the "List of search engines"

The stub sucks, but I guess it's okay to add a link. --Ardonik.talk()^* 00:52, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

- A metasearch engine should be listed as such. Just because it has been around for a long time it should not be assumed to be something it is not. - Anaras 11:06, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Internet search engines or WWW?

The article's title says Internet search engines, but inside the article, WWW search engines. Not the same think you know. :) Should this article be renamed, or <blank>? Newmanbe 02:51, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

The article shouldn't be renamed -- rather, the listings should conform to a higher standard. There is plenty of stuff in here which is either a simple directory or a very basic commercial listing page, rather than a search engine.

The term search engine refers to a website with several characteristics including:

a crawler program (or 'bot') that gathers listings of a particular datatype
an index program or database of the listings which is kept up to date (note: data may also be submitted directly to the index)
a search program with a familiar Google- or Yahoo-style interface that enables simple entry of keywords and a 'go' button to begin the search.

Suggestion: edit the list and remove all non-search engine sites, OR split the list into separate pages for search engines, directories, and other listing sites. My preference would be to just list search engines, however to be clear i work for one (SimplyHired.com) so my opinion is biased.dave 07:42, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I disagree, a search engine is not limited the World Wide Web, for example Jughead (computer), Archie search engine, and Veronica (computer). There are still servers running those search engines (Jughead and Veronica at least). If the title does not to be changed, then the introduction does. Newmanbe 16:13, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm... well i think the usefulness of non-WWW internet search engines is rather limited for most mortals, but if we need to expand the suggestion to include those fine with me. My comment was more about removing or moving the sites with limited search functionality, or those with overly-narrow scope that look more like directories or simple compilations.dave 20:19, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I am not saying that that is what the list should be. I am simply saying that there is an inconsistency in the introduction and the title. You said that the title should not be changed, so it would follow that that the introduction does. Newmanbe 20:25, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

ok, i think i understand what you're saying now. i think the difference between 'Internet' and strictly 'Web' search engines is relatively minor, but i won't quibble there. my point was more about the 'search engine' part, in that right now the list of items includes a number of sites which are not search engines, even if you stretched the meaning of the term quite a bit. so perhaps if you'd like we could even just drop the 'Internet' qualifier, and call it a 'List of Search Engines'? i think that will resolve your issue, although i believe the list would still have to be cleaned up to meet a more rigorous definition of 'search engine'.dave 01:09, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'd rather drop the Web search engine part, but if what you said is what people want, so be it. Benn Newman 16:42, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

i'm still a Wikipedia newbie, and i'm a little hesitant to be so be bold as to jump in and change the title of a pretty big article like this in my first few days of editing... however, i feel pretty strongly this page should be about search engines, rather than directories. there are perhaps 50-200 relevant web-based specialty search engines that would make sense to list here, but if the title is loosely interpreted to include directories & listing sites, the number would easily be in the thousands.

if others agree, i'd like to suggest we keep the title as is (or tighten to WWW internet search engines if you'd prefer, though i don't think that's necessary). furthermore, i'd suggest we take a more strict view of the definition of search engine, and reduce the # of sites listed on this page by around 2/3. since i also work for a job search engine i feel that my perspective is biased, but with just job search alone there are easily over 1,000 sources for job listings -- of which perhaps less than 10 truly qualify as search engines.

since you appear to have more experience here, can you suggest an approach to resolve title? should a separate page be created for directories and such? other thoughts?dave 21:49, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone else have anything to say about this? Benn Newman 12:19, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion

I deleted the [[hakia]] entry - according to the Hakia page - it is a beta version. I readded hakia before reading this. I removed the red link to WinSrev since there is not even a stub page for this topic, and http://www.winsrev.com seems non-functional. From the google cache of the page it looks like somebody's amateur attempt at a search engine ("Searching 182,725 web pages!") and a little more google searching shows that it is quite a joke indeed. --Rhomboid 07:50, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I propose a link of a search engines directory (like search engines colossus) : http://www.searchenginesdir.com - Ababou, 21 February 2006

It seems that there is only one search engines directory that has the right to be on Wikipedia : Search Engine Colossus, and no others. Any reason for that ? - 07 March 2006

The reason would be WP:SPAM. A lot of spam links have been added, the more ads a site has the more likely it is to be removed as spam. Just zis Guy you know? 10:13, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the last external link, I'm unconvinced that is satisfies the guidelines set forth in Wikipedia:External links but I'm open to hearing counterarguments. - brenneman ^{T}^{L} 02:46, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Added/rearranged IRC search engines

I added a few external links to some XDCC and IRC search engines, and seperated the two sections. This is NOT linkspam, I'm simply too lazy to create a wikipedia entry for every single site. If someone wants to do so, by my guest. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.248.132.180 (talk • contribs)

As I said on my talk page, I removed your external links because this is an article of links to Wikipedia articles about search engines, not an article of links to search engines (see article introduction). Most XDCC and IRC search engines would not fulfill WP:WEB and articles on them would thus possibly face deletion for non-notability. Haakon 22:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

A comment about Search Engines

I must point out that many of the websites mentioned in this article are not in fact search engines, but instead content-providing websites. The articles that these search engines are linked to do NOT define them as search engines, thus should not be posted as such. The following articles are examples of this:

AOL
ICQ
Netscape (?)
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
Buy.com
Dulance
eBay
NexTag
Shopping.com
All Headline News
CNN
MSNBC
Internet Archive (sorry, simply not a search engine.)
WebMD
Thomas Register

Just because a website has a search capability does not make it a search engine. I suggest that these articles be removed, and a specific criteria for addition of search engines be defined. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.248.132.180 (talk • contribs)

I totally agree with the above guys comment, but only with the intent of his comment. Amazon.com's service, A9 (a9.com), is a real search engine. The AOL listing is controversial, because, depending on its definition, is so ingrained into society, that to some people it represents what is a computer. In this regard, it is providing to the user a means of search. That, and I remember in the 90s that AOL introduced "keyword based access", which is a controlled vocabulary, supervised classification system, which very much falls into the definition of a search engine. Internet Archive provides a mean to search its cache, and so, it is a search engine. EBay provides its own means of searching its products, so it is, by all means, a search engine. I could go on, but you see my point. This type of above statement is an example of the problem of 'search engine' being very, very, loosely defined. Even with the above topic on the definition of a search engine, it is STILL very loosely defined.Josh Froelich 19:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Where is ask?

Ask.com is number three or four in search engines after Google, Yahoo and possibly MSN. I guess this should give it the right of an entry in this list. But where is it? Missing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.158.181.247 (talk • contribs)

It wasn't there because nobody has added it. I added it now (and you could have, too). Haakon 21:52, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Kolai.com

I added Kolai [1] to regional search engines. It is a search engine from Turkey.

I removed it per the first sentence of this article; it is only for internal links. --Haakon 07:35, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

definitions again

amazon.com and some of the others questioned above are collections of programs, some of which are search engines in the sense of programs used to search a database-- amazon's database --or mshould we say collection of databases-- etc. can be searched with their own search engine, which is described on the Amazon.com page, or by external engines. Similarly, google etc maintain large internal databases and are more than a search engine. Dialog is a database aggregator, but also comprises several search engines, & I am not sure what part is the most important.

I have not encountered any adequate term to describe such systems. The term search engine, is defined in that article as "A search engine or search service is a program designed to help find information stored on a computer system", which is about as nonspecific as you can get., I'm not arguing any point, but hoping for information. DGG 05:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I have removed a load of non search engines including Amazon and ridiculous ones like YouTube which is a video clip service. It has a search engine to search its vast content but that doesnt make it a search engine and I amn baffled as to how anyone can define it as search. I strongly suspect the page the page needs further culling. IMO all the examples here should include the search engine link within the first sentence of their respective articles, surely that should be the make or break test of inclusion here. Otherwise you could include any and all websites with an internal search facility, BBC has such a facility but we cant call the BBC a search engine and it would dilute the term as to make it meaningless and this article on of the largest on wikipedia. While Google image, etc are sub search engines of google they need to have their own article to be notable here, I believe, SqueakBox 18:31, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your take on this, but, as it happens, there is a page List of Google products which links to an article about Google Image, and many of the other special search facilities. Like them or not, all of them that are still around do qualify as notable. (Not all of them are like the advanced search options, where it just puts a prefix qualifier in to limit to part of the database.) It is not our fault if everything that can possibly be called a search engine is called a search engine. We follow usage, not authorize it. I can understand not wanting to have a category like a "List of Computer programs." Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the possibility :) DGG 06:00, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Exalead should be added

Or are I'm wrong?

It is defned as a search engine so it should go in, SqueakBox 01:34, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Remove cleanup tag?

The cleanup tag was put here by EurekaLott in November 2005. [2]. His comment was "Article is full of linkspam. Adding cleanup tag." Since all surviving entries in today's file are Wikipedia articles, can we conclude there is no more linkspam? If that's the case, the tag should be removed, since there is nothing to clean up. EdJohnston 05:09, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. -Patstuart 05:11, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

planned improvements

The improvement in this page is well under way, and it is ironic that these comments should have been made just as it was starting. My intention, at any rate, is to rename this page List of academic databases and search engines, and have catregroized asnd alphabetical lists--alongwith liikns to pages aboutthe various types, and about the concept. Please check the current definition of search engine--it is now being used as much more inclusive than a program to search a database.: a search engine or search service is a document retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system, such as on the World Wide Web, inside a corporate or proprietary network, or in a personal computer If the page is going to disappear it will be replaced by a page planned properly from the start, but it might be better to work with this. WP is not a list, means wp is not only a list. There are many hundred lists in WP, some with annotation, it can serve as a very useful index to the material. People use lists as finding aids: "I'm not sure what its called exactly, but if I can look at a list I'll pick it out" This takes more than a few days; I will try to upgrade this as qquickly as possible. I can understand the feeling about it as it now stands. DGG 22:17, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry if I nominated this article for deletion right before a planned improvement. I also understand that list are okay, but just a list is not. What I do not see is how this article can ever become more than just a list. What do you have planned?

Regardless I am not dead set on killing this article, but I have started the nomination and still stand by my reasoning. Perhaps in light of new information I may change my mind. HighInBC 22:40, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

A list is effective because it focuses subjects. The alphabetical part of a list is usually just an index, but

if annotated a little it can do more: see the "list of librarians for the sort of thing I've done, and I'd do-- gives enough bio in a word to two to place the person, separates out what might well be separate pages once we get enough data, and puts the problems in places where people will see them.
This can be done in a more complicated way with categories, but this may be overkill for this subject.

There's a more important problem, which is why I stopped. I do not think it is clear what a search engine is. Most large systems are databases, and can be searched. A great many of them store documents, and they can be searched. In a sense all such systems can be seen as programs, or as interactive systems (nowadays), or as search engines. The 2 key operations of most programs are sorting and searching. cf. Knuth v.1. WP in that sense is a search engine., and there's part of it which is in a more strict sense. My example is Amazon. It has a separate dedicated search engine in the narrow sene, "A9" which it also licenses for use elsewhere.

I invite your help about terminology. -- and about useful material. -- and about the right name for the page.
Should everything in WP that can possibly be seen as a search engine be included?

The alternative, if this is hopelessly unclear, is to restart it, intact or in parts. But since there is an article "search engines" it seems obvious there should be a list of them. I too am not prepared to insist.

DGG 05:30, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Aliweb concerns: http://www.aliweb.com may not be a bona fide search engine

While there is an article Aliweb, and there is a web site at www.aliweb.com, the latter seems (at first glance) entirely promotional and unlikely to be of genuine value to most Wikipedia readers. A genuine project called Aliweb, descended from Archie and documented (somewhat) in the early 90's, did exist but may no longer have any real connection to aliweb.com, at least, none that is visible to users of the present-day site. The search engine which is provided at aliweb.com is unable to find 'wikipedia' or 'google'. I put forward this opinion at Talk:Aliweb though User:Bill Slawski had previously made similar comments on Talk:Aliweb. The only defender of the link to aliweb.com is an anonymous contributor. One possible remedy is to stubbify the Aliweb article, since at present it has no reliable sources. Removing Aliweb from List of search engines is of course an option. Please respond here if you have ideas for how to address the problem. EdJohnston 20:10, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't see a problem here

The Aliweb article should stay. A good analogy would be deleting references to the Altair 8800 as the first personal computer because it doesn't have a mouse or a graphical user interface so therefore its not a "bona fide" peronal computer. Then if Ed Roberts sold the company to someone else or gave it to them . . . well that would mean they have nothing to do with the original Altair company MITS -- "no real connection". And of course, that would mean we would need to stubbify the article. Of course if these people that were given or bought the company and knew something about the subject were to offer any factual information, they would be ignored and could not possibly be credible.

If Wozniak and Jobs describe the orgins of Apple personal computers in an article on wikipedia, would anyone believe what they say? Do they need to have references? I mean, this is ridiculous. It is very common knowledge that Aliweb is the web's first search engine as well as it is common knowledge how Woz and Jobs created the first Apple I computer. Believe it or not, the Earth travels in an orbit around the Sun, there is a big store called Wal-Mart that you can buy toothpaste from, the Spruce Goose could fly, a flying machine powered by two 180 horse power steam engines, 17 foot propellers, and a wing area of 4000 square feet, flew 200 feet before crashing in 1894, and there is a popular magazine currently available called "Maxim".

You should really do some research. aliweb 11:18, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

It's up to the consensus of the editors as to whether they find your argument convincing. Can you think of anyone who would actually BENEFIT from using your search engine? Do you yourself use aliweb.com to search in preference to Google, knowing that Aliweb apparently has a 1993 version of the web? The fact that Woz and Jobs created Apple is documented in many reliable sources (WP:RS) including print publications, while the current Aliweb article has no printed sources. Your possible personal connection to the company suggests you should avoid editing their article or adding a link to their site, due to conflict of interest (WP:COI). EdJohnston 21:46, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I would hope that the "editors" would find my argument which is the equivalent of "the sun is hot" convincing (and obvious). "Aliweb apparently has a 1993 version of the web" again you need to do some research. I guess visitors to the Smithsonian derive no benefit from their visit because of all the OLD things there. Aliweb is referenced in print publications as well as many places on the web (again do some research). Lets see, the site aliweb.com exists. If I put a link to it and I am the grand potentate high master of aliweb.com or I hate the web site's name being mentioned, its not going to change the fact that aliweb.com exists. Nor will it change any other facts concerning the service or its history. Again, I'm not seeing the problem here other than you not wanting to do research and contribute positively to the article, and wanting instead to discredit everything concerning it. That's why I question your motives here. You would think I was trying to convince you that there is a bridge in New York you can buy from me and charge tolls and get rich rather than asking you if the water was wet and you saying nope feels like sun heated sand. aliweb 09:31, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion for Table

I think this article needs to be more encyclopaedic. It should have references for each entry, a very clear definition of why or why not services are listed, introductory content, and it should have definitions for each category. I propose, therefore, a classification scheme. Basically, present this information as a table. Each row is a specific service. Each column represents a different attribute or way of splitting up the various services. This also lets people focus on only certain services by looking at only specific values. Of note would be there should not be any subjective preference to the order in which the services are listed, or the order of the features, or the level of detail. I know some of these very minor features are huge to smaller services as that is what they consider to be their competitive advantage in the market.

The table should list the services alphabetically, by the corporate name (not parent corporate, not url). The features should be listed alphabetically, or by some well-defined order of importance, perhaps by how much each attribute differentiates each service.

This would also solve the problem that some of these services support many of these categories, maybe some more than others, but it leaves out information. Perhaps add content and offer it as a way for an article reader to be guided to which service he wants to learn about, objectively. By getting more objective, with references, descriptions, and logical organization, it will add some support to this currently poorly structured article.

Some of the attributes I am considering:

Meta Search - a classification as to whether the search engine provides its own service by generating its own results, or incorporates the results of one or more other services, regardless of how it integrates or represents those results. Should try and note the service(s) used
Vertical Market/Subject/Theme (not sure the best name) - this is a categorical listing of the specific types of searches available. Each service listed would display one or more of these in a list. These would include:
- People
- Answers
- Websites
- Medical
- Accountancy
- BitTorrent
- Property
- Business
- Comparison Shopping
- Charity
- Places/Geography
Content Type - what is the content
- Webpages
- Blogs/feeds
- News
- Images/Videos
- Multimedia
Interface - interface categories
- Standard Search Query/Advanced Search Form
- Visual Interface
Supplementary Features
- Clustering
- Summarization
Geographical Constraints - if the engine is country specific, denote which country. If it is for searching geography, mark it as a geographic subject type
Defunct - services no longer running or in use

What do you guys think? Of course there may be a better classification of the services, but hopefully this would allow others to actually deem this somewhat appropriate, as this page really falls short of the standards. Josh Froelich 00:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

It would be hard to do this in an objective way, would take a lot of editor time, and might not be all that interesting to the readers. Note that we already have a grouping system in the present article which presumably helps somewhat. The thing you describe above sounds like a very-well-annotated directory, so seems to fall into WP:NOT just as much as a conventional list would. Somehing that's not been attempted yet is to survey actual search engine technology from the viewpoint of how they work. Now *that* would be a real article, in my view. The closest I've seen to that is the PageRank article. EdJohnston 14:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Yah, I have ants in my pants about this article being spammed so much. I really do think it could be made worthwhile, in an abritrary way. I came across an article with exactly the type of format I propose: List_of_compiler-compilers. That it what I am referring to. For one, some of these listed services fall into multiple categories, which would be better represented in the table. Two, the listing would be entirely alphabetical, enabling people to find a service by name and not have to scan each category. Three, they could find a service by one of its attributes, as instead of just listing the general type of the search engine, we could really get in depth and list a ton of factors like index depth, crawling policies obeyed (or ignored), organic versus inorganic, estimated user base, founding date, a link to the parent company, whether its multi lingual, etc. These are all valuable pieces of info that would lend credibility to this sad state of an article. Again, only conversing here, not trying to demand anything. Josh Froelich 03:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Search Engines for Kids

I suggest opening a category named "Search Engines for Kids". It's time to group Yahoo! Kids, Ask for Kids and Quintura for Kids services. I have some content to fill it with. KevinLocker 12:47, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Definitions of types

I was considering adding a brief description of each type of search engine to help readers understand the differences. Before I did anything to the article I thought I would propose the content here.

General search engines - search many different types of content and fit into several of the categories
Open source search engines - engines where offer public access to the source code of the software or meet the definition of open source.
Metasearch engines - aggregate the results of one or more search engines. Metasearch engines do not store their own index but rather use the API of other engines to produce results.
Clustering search engines - offer clusters of results in addition to a listing of results in an effort to improve the ease of finding information
Regional search engines - limit search results to a particular geographical region
People search engines - unlike document or web page search engines, people search engines focus on sifting through names of people or other attributes about people
Email-based search engines - focus on searching of email
Visual search engines - offer a more visual interface to the entering of a search query or the browsing of search results in an effort to ease finding information
Answer-based search engines - services which offer manually generated answers to questions, not in the form of search engine results but in the form of a written response.
Google-based search engines - search engines based off of the Google search service
Yahoo!-based search engines - search engines based off of the Yahoo! search service
Windows-Live-based search engines - search engines based off of the Windows Live search service
Job search engines - search engines devoted to searching job listings
Blog search engines - search engines devoted to searching blogs, articles, and RSS feeds
News search engines - search engines devoted primarily to identifying and retrieving news articles, typically recent articles
Multimedia search engines - for searching video, audio, and other forms of multimedia
BitTorrent search engines - for searching BitTorrent listings which contain several types files
Accountancy search engines
Medical search engines
Local search engines - search engines which constrain results to those within a certain proximity of the searcher
Property search engines - for searching property listings
Business search engines - for searching business listings
Comparison shopping search engines - for searching merchandise
Charity search engines - for finding charitable organizations
Geographic search engines - see Regional search engines
Defunct search engines - search engines that are no longer in use or available

I know the definitions can be improved, but what do you think about the idea? Josh Froelich 23:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

There may be ways of improving the present article, but these descriptions are kind of obvious from each section title. Let's see if anyone else wants to comment. EdJohnston 01:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Search engine definitions

I thought this would be interested for someone to comment upon. Sorry if it is not applicable, but I think it can be used as support for various arguments. The list came from a Google search. Josh Froelich 01:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Internet search engines (eg Google, AltaVista) help users find web pages on a given subject. The search engines maintain databases of web sites and use programs (often referred to as "spiders" or "robots") to collect information, which is then indexed by the search engine. Similar services are provided by "directories," which maintain ordered lists of websites, eg Yahoo! [3]

Software that enables users to search the Internet using keywords. Examples of well known services of this type are AltaVista and Google!. For more information consult our Internet Reference section. [4]

A program which acts as a card catalog for the Internet. Search engines attempt to index and locate desired information by searching for keywords in which a user specifies. The method for finding this information is usually done by maintaining indices of Web resources that can be queried for the keywords entered by the user. ... [5]

A tool or program which allows keyword searching for relevant sites or information on the Internet. General and topic-specific search engines are prevalent today, for example, Education World, WebCrawler, Infoseek, Lycos, and Yahoo are examples of search engines. [6]

the software used to retrieve information from a database or from the Internet (eg, the WebLUIS catalog or Yahoo!). A search engine generally includes features such as Boolean operators, search fields, display format, etc. [7]

A program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. Although search engine is really a general class of programs, the term is often used to specifically describe systems like Alta Vista and Excite that enable users to search for documents on the World Wide Web and USENET newsgroups. [8]

A search engine is a searchable online database of internet resources. It has several components: search engine software, spider software, an index (database), and a relevancy algorithm (rules for ranking). The search engine software consists of a server or a collection of servers dedicated to indexing Internet Web pages, storing the results and returning lists of pages to match user queries. The spidering software constantly crawls the Web collecting Web page data for the index. ... [9]

This term refers to a program that helps users find information in text-oriented databases. [10]

A web-based program that allows users to search and retrieve specific information online. The search engine may search the full text of web documents or a list of keywords, or use librarians who review web documents and index them manually for retrieval. [11]

A computer program that electronically searches the contents of a database to locate specific information. [12]

Computer software program designed to help users of the Internet locate information on the World Wide Web. It collects and indexes Internet resources ( Web pages, Usenet Newsgroups, programs, images, etc. ) and provides a keyword search system allowing the user to identify and retrieve resources. There are many search engines available and each is different in their scope, search protocols, and appearance. Some common search engines are: Alta Vista, Google, Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, and HotBot. [13]

software that searches for specific information or files on the Internet using search criteria that you enter. [14]

A web search tool that automatically visits websites (using crawlers), records and indexes them within its database, and generates results based on a user's search criteria. Submitting a website to a search engine usually requires just the page URL (and often an e-mail address) and optimisation techniques are essential for a website to be indexed and ranked appropriately by search engines. Best examples of a search engine are AltaVista, Google and Lycos [15]

A software that searches for information and returns sites which provide that information. Examples of search engines are AltaVista, Google, Hotbot etc. [16]

A directory of Internet content. If you're looking for specific information on the WWW, a search engine can list Web sites at which you'll likely find that information. Popular search engines include Excite, Snap, Yahoo, and Infoseek. [17]

A program that acts as a catalog for the Internet. Using keywords, search engines to help a user locate their desired information. Examples: Yahoo, Google, Overture, Alta Vista, Lycos, and Excite. Up Serving: The real-time, controlled distribution of advertising creative to publisher web sites. [18]

a program that searches for a specific word or groups of words within a Web page and creates a list of the Web pages that contain the specified word(s). Google, Dogpile, Ask Jeeves, and Alta Vista are examples of popular search engines. [19]

A (usually web-based) system for searching the information available on the Web. Some search engines work by automatically searching the contents of other systems and creating a database of the results. other search engines contains only material manually approved for inclusion in a database, and some combine the two approaches. [20]

A program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. [21]

specialized software, such as AltaVista and Yahoo, that lets WWW browser users search for information on the Web by using keywords, phrases, and boolean logic. Different search engines have different ways of categorizing and indexing information. Search engines are accessed by typing in the URL of that engine or using a browser's compilation of search engines in its Internet search function. [22]

Any service generally designed to allow users to search the web or a specialized database of information. Web search engines generally have paid listings and organic listings. Organic listings typically come from crawling the web, though often human-powered directory listings are also optionally offered. [23]

An computerized index of the web pages; creating a searchable database. Example are AltaVista, Google [24]

A directory of websites that allow visitors to search for information based on a keyword or keyword phrase that is entered. There are five types of search engines – Pay-Per-Click, Paid-Inclusion, Organic, Algorithmic and Comparison-Shopping.[25]

Is a database of web sites that is ranked according to the computerized criteria that the programmers decide upon called an algorithm. Various search engines determine ranking on their own different factors of importance or relevancy. For the last few years the Google search engine was the most popular search engine supplying the search results for Yahoo and to a lesser extent MSN and AOL. ...[26]

A Web site that employs bots (spiders, robots, crawlers) to search the Web. Search engines take the information gathered by its robots and use it to create a searchable index of the Internet. There are many different web search engines that you can use to do a search. Some of the most popular ones are Google, AltaVista, AllTheWeb and Excite. [27]

a computer program that retrieves documents or files or data from a database or from a computer network (especially from the internet) [28]

I have not visited all these sources, but it serves as a good starting point. Let's say that if it does not meet at least one of these definitions, it should not be so easy to consider it a search engine?

Angle Theory Search Engine

First Technology in computer world, which allows internet surfing to non English and illiterates also. 75% population in this world can not identify English alphabets. But by cyber law a website's name could be register in English language only. Atoall.com solve this problem Angle Theory Search Engine —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.253.217.166 (talk • contribs) 08:06, 19 March 2009