Subject Specific    Blogs    Media    News    Invisible Web

 

SUBJECT SPECIFIC SEARCH ENGINES & DIRECTORIES

Search Engines Directory
Directory of topical search engines, directories and databases from Search Engine Guide.

Virtual Search Engines
Collection of over a thousand specialized search engines, but the orientation is popular rather than scholarly and the agressive pop-up windows for advertising make the site unpleasant to use.

ROLLYO
Create your own search engine, called a "searchroll" of only sites that you trust using the Yahoo! database. You can also explore other people's searchrolls that have been publically released or search the Web.

Scirus
A science-specific search engine that covers over 300 million science-related web pages and reports, peer-reviewed articles, patents, pre prints and journals that other search engines miss. It also offers unique functionalities designed for scientists and researchers. Search results can be ranked by relevance or by date.

Voice of the Shuttle
Massive searchable subject directory for arts &humanities research.

BUBL LINK
Professionally-maintained subject directory of selected Internet resources covering all academic subject areas. Each site is evaluated, cataloged and described and the links are tested monthly. Searchable. Hosted by the University of Strathclyde Library in Glasgow.

Infomine
Searchable subject directory to scholarly Internet collections, developed by the Library of the University of California, Riverside.

MEL: Michigan Electronic Library
University of Michigan's subject directory of "Best of the Internet" sites selected by librarians for quality. Can be searched or browsed by category.

 

BLOG SEARCH ENGINES

Best of the Web Blog Directory
Directory of selected blogs organized by category. Also searchable.

Blogpulse
Blog search engine that also analyzes & reports on daily activity in the blogosphere.

Bloglines A free online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content.

Google Blog Search Maintains pages of the most popular blogs by category: top stories, politics, US, World, Business, Technology, Video Games, Science, Entertainment, Movies, Television and Sports as well as a search box. Abd advanced blog search page is also available to make your search more precise.

Technorati
The oldest blog search tool, it now also searches photos, videos & music. Input a search and it first displays the blog posts. Using the navigation buttons at the top, you can switch to blogs, videos, photos, music or events without having to retype the search.

 

MEDIA SEARCH ENGINES

Image and Icon Search Engines
Collection of links to 41 image and icon search engines, some in beta versions, with innovative features to refine a search or to find similar pictures by theme, color or texture. It targets web designers and gives information about the copyright status of the pictures. Includes: EveryStockPhoto, Xcavator, Ginipic, GazoPa, FreeFoto, TurboPhoto – Free Stock Images, Feelimage, oSkope, Incogna, Imagery, ImageBase, Pixolu, Picsearch, Picitup, PicFog, PicFindr, Pixsy, Biomed-Search, Compfight, Tiltomo, Photogen, facesaerch, Multicolr, PicBrk, PD Photo, Stock.XCHNG, Challenger IconDB, ICONLOOK, Icons-Search, Iconlet, IconFinder, IconSeeker, Icon Library, EasyIconFinder, Free Icons Web, Very Icon, IconsPedia.

Bing Images
Formerly Live Search. Very high relevance. Mousing over an image gives you its dimension & file size. Clicking on it gives you a look at it in context plus the URLs for the graphic as well as the page. It allows for the easy creation of scratchpads which registered users can save. On personal name searches, a list of related people appears on the right side of the screen.

Google Image Search
Generally delivers far more hits than the other major image search engines but often with low relevance.

Yahoo! Image Search
Usually fewer hits than Google's but with better relevancy. Has an advance search mode that allows you to specify size & color vs. black & white.

Exalead Images
French search engine also smaller than Google but also with greater relevance. The pixel dimentions of each image is listed under the thumbnails in the search results and passing the cursor over it pops up a box with the kb size and click on options to go to the original size of the graphic, the page of origin, saving the image to your computer or saving it in your Exalead favorites account. The advance search mode allows you to narrow your search by size, file type, landscape vs. portrait orientation, and color vs. grey scale

Digital Image Resources on the Deep Web
This is not a search engine but a large collection of annotated links to digital collections that are not indexed by the search engines.

Flickr
A popular photo sharing site, it improves the relevancy rate by allowing users to tag their & other people's photos. Includes a blog.

Blinkx.tv
Search engine for over a million hours of TV and video.

Everyzing
Formerly Podzinger, a podcast search engine, Everyzing hopes to leverage speech recognition to text & their other technologies to increase the volume of consumable multimedia content offered by partner media companies. More accurate for searching for audio or video

Pluggd
Both a podcast search engine and a directory. Includes user tagging and reviews & allows you to create playlists. It searches inside the podcasts & uses related words & concepts to enrich your search.

Podcast Alley
Large directory of podcasts. Searchable or browse by category

The Podcast Directory
Large directory of podcasts organized alphabetically & by topic. Searchable by title & description, keywords, locations, host or episodes.

 

NEWS SEARCH ENGINES

Daypop
Current events search engine that indexes newspapers, online magazines, and weblogs on a daily basis.

Yahoo News
Larger and more used than Google News.

Yahoo News
Larger and more used than Google News.

Topix
Largest of the news search engines, it also provides micro-news pages for 30,000 cities and towns in the US.

 

INVISIBLE WEB
(Internet resources search engines can not index)

The Invisible Web Directory
A directory of some of the best resources the Invisible Web has to offer.

CompletePlanet
Provides access to locate 70,000+ searchable databases and specialty search engines for searching theInvisible Web.

Resource Discovery Network
A collaboration of over sixty educational and research organisations, including the Natural History Museum and the British Library, RDN provides access to the "Invisible Web" by selecting, indexing, describing and linking to pages and pdf/text documents, using the expertise of specialists from the participating institutions.