Search Strategies for the Web and Databases - Part II

A brief guide to the best search engines and directories available on the Web
(best option in each category designated with an asterisk)

Best Search Engines
Alltheweb - http://www.alltheweb.com/ (powered by Fast!, doing a good job competing with Google)
Altavista - http://www.altavista.com/ (used to be the top engine until Google launched...)
* Google - http://www.google.com/

Best Directories
Open Directory Project - http://www.dmoz.org/ (an "open source" type initiative, getting better every day...)
Looksmart - http://www.looksmart.com/ (also improving, but too much here is implicitly sponsored...)
* Yahoo! - http://www.yahoo.com/

Meta-search Engines
Meta-search engines search several engines in parallel, and return a collation of results.
If the search engines above fail you, this can be a good next-best option.

Metacrawler - http://www.metacrawler.com/ (I think this is the first of the meta-type engines; used to be the best)
* Profusion - http://www.profusion.com/CatNav.asp?ID=1&AGTID=1&queryterm= (use this link)
Dogpile - http://www.dogpile.com/
** SearchEngine base - http://www.searchenginebase.com/

Directory to Web Sites
From Yahoo... http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Searching_the_Web/Search_Engines_and_Directories/

Reference Sites (where librarians go to find answers to the really tough questions...)
LibrarySpot - http://www.libraryspot.com/
RefDesk.com - www.refdesk.com
Librarians' Index to the Internet - http://www.lii.org/

Note - list soon to be updated...