http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/special/web100/search.htm (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)

PC Magazine Top 100 Web Sites

`WEB CATALOGS AND SEARCH TOOLS`

You can't dial 411 and ask for someone's home page. The Web has no official, consolidated directory of sites, nor will it have one anytime soon. Fortunately, several independent companies offer Internet catalogs and search engines that let you find a site without knowing its URL. These tools offer the only systematic means of finding what you're looking for or making sure you've got your search bases covered.

For your convenience we've included a simple form to search the sites, whenever a search is applicable. Be aware that you'll find more options for precision searching by going directly to the site.

Digital Equipment's Alta Vista is a new entry in the Web index wars and a showcase for Digital server hardware and software. It offers lightning-fast searching of over 21 million Web pages and all Usenet newsgroups. Its advanced query option allows you to search using Boolean operators and specify the relevance ranking of the retrieved items.

Architext Software's Excite a recent addition to the Internet's catalog family, serves up two separate navigational tools. NetSearch lets you search for both Web sites and Usenet newsgroups via plain text or keyword methods, while NetReviews offers capsule reviews of Web sites organized in a subject hierarchy.

InfoSeek offers both free and cost-based Internet searching. Its free service covers Web sites and newsgroups, but it is often busy and returns only ten matches for each search. The cost-based tool, which can be accessed via several different payment plans, provides a faster connection and access to several unique news databases.

One of the most powerful and comprehensive search sites, Lycos indexes over 7,980,000 pages, which, according to Lycos, covers roughly 91 percent of the Web. Unique features include a formless text search and a list of the Web's 250 most popular sites. Be warned: For basic searches, this powerful tool may make you feel that you're swatting flies with a sledgehammer.

The McKinley Group's Magellan Internet Directory provides both ratings and extensive reviews for each site listed in its Web catalog. You can browse the catalog by subject or search it by keyword, rating, review size, and category.

The advanced search engine that accompanies the Open Text Index has access to roughly 1 million Web pages. The Open Text crawler tool tracks tens of thousands of pages per day, indexing every word as it goes.

America Online's WebCrawler which uses a robot to gather and index Web pages, offers fast, simple searching of a content-based index. There are also interesting pages here devoted to Web statistics and WebCrawler's intriguing Web robot technology.

CERN's Web Servers Directory/Virtual Tourist is a directory of academic and scientific Web servers registered with the World-Wide Web Consortium. The Web Servers Directory has a geographical index, and the Virtual Tourist offers a clickable world map. CERN, however, does not supply a search engine.

The Whole Internet Catalog from Global Network Navigator, is a directory of 1,200 free Web sites, that contains reviews and ratings. The catalog is nicely organized by topic but does not have a search engine.

One of the top search sites on the Web, Yahoo contains keyword searching and a hierarchical subject guide that is well organized and cross-referenced. Features include Web Launch (a service for announcing your new Web site to the world), a directory of the Web's most popular sites, and Yahoo's list of the coolest home pages.