Smatterings

Search Engines and Other Techniques

Finding stuff on the internet: A search enginge is like a beacon of light.

Out of a million web sites out there, a couple of them hold the information that you are looking for. Sometimes finding the right web page with the right information is like finding a tool you had in your hand a minute ago.

Search engines index a website based on key words the author of the site chose to describe their site. Nine times out of ten these are not the words you would use to describe the contents on the same site. The trick is to think of another word that means the same thing when the search engine comes back with the message "No matches found."

When no word produces positive results, it is time to try another search engine.

Answers.com

Answers.com add this to IE 7, Firefox, Google Tools or your Mac. 4 million topics. Reliable and frequently updated facts on any subject you look up. Great on historic places. When I searched for Jacob's Well this seach engine gave me a pretty good history in 30 seconds.

Google Search Engine

Google does well on science related topics, theater topics, and is a good way to see if there is any information that you are looking for at this site, as soon as they index me. This is one of my favorite search engines. Athough you can make it your default search engine in MS Explorer Explorer 7, I still keep the link below so you can easily search my site.

The Open Directory

Like AOL and Yahoo, this is a good place to look for information on playwriting, screenwriting, and writing in general. When Open Directory can not find the words you were searching for, they give you All the Web, Alta Vista, Hot Bot, Netscape, Teoma and Yahoo as other search engine options.

Stauri Orataur

Stauri Orataur In this freeware search program, a lady talks like a robot from an old sci-fi movie, and after some memory error messages from Windows this program gave me a reasonable answer on who won the 3rd Crusade from multiple seach engines in less than two minutes.

Christian Directories

While there has always been one or two in existence, recently they have begun to multiply and then they multiplied again.

Here are Christian search engines and directories that I have surfed across so far.

General Directories

Although there are many, most are connected to a few. So I listed the ones you should submit to once you have a pretty good website, and ones that rely on webmasters submissions. The ones I use the most are listed on this page. Errr...you already scrolled past them.

Here are general search engines and directories that I have surfed across so far and freeware tools for filling out website descriptions.

L G Search excellent alternative search directories list.

Universiteitsbibliotheek has a long list of specialized search engines. Always do a search and see if you are listed before submitting your site.

KidsClick! Worlds of Web Surfing is an excellent site with more info and the same info presented at Smatterings about finding stuff.

Webrings

Some of the best links and information can be found using Webrings. Relevant Webrings have been added to the bottom of my web pages to make it easier for you to find more information.

Webring Frequently Asked Questions by James S. Huggins explains what a webring is and gives good instructions on how to use a webring once you found a topic that you are interested in.

This is a compilation of all the places to check for information via webrings. If you are a webpage author this is a great page to start from, to find webrings relevant to your page.

This Web Ring will link you to other link pages and directories for finding useful and neat stuff on the Web.

This Resource Ring Net Ring owned by

hosted by RingSurf

This Web Ring will link you to other pages that specialize in search engines.

Helpful Freeware

DeadLink Editor

After you bookmark many websites under your Favorites heading on you browser, you eventually collect more bookmarked links than you can easily keep tract of.

AM-Deadlink is a browser utility that goes through your links, checks if they are good and looks for duplicates.

Dictionaries and thesaurus

Esno Simply release the Caps Lock key to activate it; dictionary, thesaurus, cut, copy, word count and calculate for Windows 2000, xp and vista.

Info Savers

You can look at them later, after you take a break from all the effort you put into finding whatever it was that you were looking for.

(I wanted to tell you this before you find what you want. This way you have an easy way of collecting a huge amount of information.)

Yankee Clipper is a clipboard utility that can save up to 100 files into a list.

Sponser Ads and Link Eliminators

IE7 Pro AD Blocker, Flash Block blocks advertising, including flash ads, rich media, fly-ins, slide-ins, pop-ups, pop-unders, spyware ads, adware ads, and messenger ads. AD Blocker and Flash Block are found among the many IE7 addons featuring Tabbed Browsing Management, Spell Check, Inline Search, Super Drag Drop, Crash Recovery, Proxy Switcher, Mouse Gesture, Tab History Browser, Web Accelerator, User Agent Switcher, and Webpage Capturer.

Sponsered Ad Blocker Suppresses sponsered ad when surfing search engines making it easier to focus in on your hunt.

Click on one of the icons below to return to where you were before, or to check out a page you have never seen.

Go to Technical and Script Writing links page.