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=Alternative Search Engines for Education=

Google and Bing dominate the search engine marketplace, but they are not the only – and in some cases not the best – research tools available. We will examine the range of Internet search tools that are available with an emphasis on those that will best serve those in education. Unique engines such at Touch Graph, Exalead, RaRoi, Blinkx, Wolfram Alpha, Internet Archive, and the Good Search Engine may not be household terms, but these and others have unique, useful qualities for those searching the Web.


 * 1) Background, The Big Three, Comparing Search Engines
 * 2) ALT Search Engines - Our Top Picks
 * Touch Graph
 * Exalead
 * RaRoi
 * Blinkx
 * Dogpile
 * Wolfram Alpha
 * Good Search Engine
 * Quixley
 * 1) Internet Archive
 * 2) Social Search
 * 3) Group Work! Build the "Matrix of Search Engines"
 * 4) Semantic Web
 * 5) Search Apps & New Google Tools
 * 6) Wrap-up

But before we look at different search engines....may it is a good idea to review some search terms. The following definitions are listed on the website. Search Engine ShowDown. []

and requires that both terms be found. or lets either term be found not means any record containing the second term will be excluded means the Boolean operators can be nested using parentheses + is equivalent to AND, requiring the term; the + should be placed directly in front of the search term - is equivalent to NOT and means to exclude the term; the - should be placed directly in front of the search term Operators can be entered in the case shown by the example. Examples: (salad and (lime or kiwi)) not nuts +salad -nuts lime kiwi
 * Boolean Searching** refers to how multiple terms are combined in a search.


 * Truncation:** This search technique refers to the ability to search just a portion of a word. Typically, a symbol such as the asterisk is used to represent the rest of the term. End truncation is where several letters at the beginning of a word are specified but the ending can vary. With internal truncation, a symbol can represent one or more characters within a word.

End Truncation Examples: colleg* finds college, colleges, collegium, collegial Internal Truncation Examples: col*r finds color, colour, colander Stemming: lights finds light, lights, lighting, lit
 * Stemming:** Related to truncation, it usually refers to the ability of a search engine to find word variants such as plurals, singular forms, past tense, present tense, etc. Some stemming only cover plural and singular forms.


 * Sorting**: The ability to organize the results of a search. Typically, Internet search engines sort the results by "relevance" determined by their proprietary relevance ranking algorithms. Other options are to arrange the results by date, alphabetically by title, or by root URL or host name.


 * Limits**: The ability to narrow search results by adding a specific restriction to the search. Commonly available limits are the date limit and the language limit. The latter would restrict the search results to only those Web pages identified as being in the specified language.

Phrase Searching Example: "phrase searching is fun" Beyond phrase searching, other proximity operators can specify how close terms should be to each other. Some will also specify the order of the search terms. Each search engine can define them differently and use various operator names such as NEAR, ADJ, W, or AFTER.
 * Proximity Searching** refers to the ability to specify how close within a record multiple terms should be to each other. The most commonly used proximity search option in Internet finding aids is a phrase search that requires terms to be in the exact order specified within the phrase markings. The default standard for identifying phrases is to use double quotes (" ") to surround the phrase.