People Searches --

NOTE: Searching for people's addresses can be a disappointing activity. Databases are incomplete, especially for email addresses. This is partly due to people's desire for privacy which leads them to have unlisted phone numbers and to keep their email addresses off search engine and other lists.

1. http://www.infospace.com/ ... the InfoSpace people-database is updated four times a year.
   
2. http://www.switchboard.com/ ...
   
3. http://www.peoplesearch.net/ ...
   
4. http://www.anywho.com/ ...
   
5. http://people.yahoo.com/ ...
   
6. http://www.whowhere.com/ ...
   

Annotated List of Search Engines

• Raging Search at http://www.raging.com/ is a new uncluttered search engine developed by Alta Vista.

• http://www.altavista.com/ - Alta Vista, the traditional model

• http://www.alexa.com/ - Alexa
  - Alexa describes itself as "a free Web navigation service that works with your browser and accompanies you as you surf, providing useful information about the sites you are viewing and suggesting related sites.
  - With Alexa you can: navigate the Web more efficiently with related links for each page; save time by receiving information about each page without interrupting your Web browsing." I did install Alexa as I was curious and it worked. I really like it because it gives me instant access to links which I might not think about. (CH)

• http://www.askalix.co.uk - Ask Alex is a business/product search engine.

• http://www.askjeeves.com/ - Ask Jeeves
  - I really liked askjeeves. I entered the question "Who sells a binocular harness?". Immediately I got a selection of items, pictures, dealer's nameand number and email address. askjeeves uses a number of search engines, and I found it easier to ask a question than to enter exactly the right words for some of the other searches. Besides that, I could say "binoculars" whereas other sources made me try to get there by way of cameras, a bit roundabout. (RS)
  - Ask Jeeves is fun to use as you can ask a long question and get an answer or links to check out. (CH)

• http://www.crawler.de/ A German engine, in german.

• http://www.dejanews.com/ DejaNews - searches USENET only

• http://www.dogpile.com/

• http://www.euroferret.com This engine has re-invented itself as webtop.com and takes you automatically to its new pages.

• http://www.evreka.com/ A Scandinavian site with choices for the several Scandinavian countries.

• http://www.excite.com/ - Excite

• http://www.fireball.de/
  - A German site offering a choice of several languages. I chose English, but I still got it in German--numerous options including sexy sites, music, hotels, media, etc. (RS)

• http://www.google.com/
  - Easy to use "help" instructions for searches on a wide variety of subjects (RS)

• http://homeworkheaven.com/

• http://www.hotbot.com/ - HotBot

• http://www.infoseek.com/ - Infoseek

• http://www.isleuth.com/ - Internet Sleuth

• http://www.lawcrawler.com/
  - Legal information for specific states and countries, data on law schools, etc. Run by Alta Vista, (RS)

• http://www.looksmart.com/
  - Claims 24,000 categories including news, chat, sports, entertainment etc. (RS)

• http://www.lycos.com/ - Lycos
  - Offered chat, message board, e-mail, road maps etc. I got easily to binocular references and a type of strap called binoc Joc. (RS)

• http://megago.com/

• http://www.mamma.com/

• http://www.metacrawler.com/ - Metacrawler

• http://www.netguide.com/
  - Says "do more on the net"--events, software, news, kids, travel, hobbies, weekly poll, women, arts and crafts and more. When I tried to go to the arts and crafts option I got the message that the service was not available now. It also gave me the information that northernlight.com was pronounced the best search engine in 1998 by PC Magazine (RS)

• http://www.northernlight.com/

• http://www.onekey.com/ The OneKey site calls itself "the kid safe search engine"

• http://www.savvysearch.com/search/

• http://www.search.ch/index.html.en This is a Swiss engine but this link takes you to an english language version.

• http://search.msn.com/

• http://search.thunderstone.com/texis/websearch/

• http://www.searchuk.com/

• http://www.search-it-all.com/
  - Offered many categories such as entertainment, shopping, jobs, travel, etc. I followed shopping and went to cameras, but the selections were few and not helpful. (RS)

• http://www.snap.com/

• http://www.spyhop.com/

• http://www.ukplus.com/

• http://www.viola.com/
  - Five language options for people who play the viola or have a special interest in the instrument. (RS)

• http://www.webcrawler.com/ - Webcrawler

• http://www.whatuseek.com/
  - This required a plug-in. Reference to "affliction/x-shockwave-flash" scared me off (RS)

• http://www.yahoo.com/
  - This very well known and popular site was one of the first sites to offer comprehensive search opportunities when the web was much smaller than it is today. Yahoo is still a wonderful site - and many people have set their web browsers to open Yahoo each time they launch the browser - but Yahoo is no longer the most comprehensive search engine. It is however probably the best organized-and-presented database of web documents. (RAH)

Search Engine reviews and helpful sites!

Danny's Web Searching Tips covers how to do better searches.

Greg Notess' Search Engine Showdown includes a Search Engine Chart and listings of available features.