Search engines automatically index the Web to create searchable databases. Relevance can be raised using various means, including analyzing backlinks. See also catalogs.

Alta Vista (*)

Massive full text indexer of the Web and recent Usenet news. Powerful searching options allow you to quickly narrow your search. Now includes natural language queries and combines results from Ask Jeeves.

Dogpile

Tons of different search features on this fun site, including Web Metasearching.

excite (*)

Millions of web documents (search by concept or keyword), USENET discussion groups, and classifieds, net site reviews, news, and timely columns. Has search by example feature for narrowing searches.

Fast

All the Web, All the Time.

Go.com

A full text searching engine and Internet guide to the best on the Web.

Google (*)

Google returns very relevant results quickly using popularity of backlinks. The current repository size is over 1 billion pages.

GoTo.com

A search engine that's quick, yellow, cool and provides (oh my..) relevant results. Sites can pay to raise their relevance. Based on Inktomi.

HotBot (*)

Hotwired's effort at searching domination. With millions of Web pages indexed (35%) and the ability to search on most any type of resource (Java, audio...) HotBot combines excite's relevance with Alta Vista's breadth.

Lycos

Claims to have the largest number of Web pages indexed, but Alta Vista has eclipsed this critter.

MSN

Microsoft's portal/search engine.

Northern Light

Northern Light offers high-quality periodicals in full text, an efficient search engine, and an innovative way to refine searches.

PowerSearch internet.com

Search any combination or all of the many internet.com sites and channels.

Thunderstone

Primary domain name site search engine/catalog. Good at finding sites, not individual pages.

WebCrawler

A fast search engine, with boolean matching and an adjustable number of hits. Now owned by AOL.