From A like Africa to Z like Zoology
Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), 2006-07 Edition, published by the US Department of Labor does a fantastic job on listing thousands of detailed job descriptions. For US researchers of interest: The links to sources of additional information.
DOT - Dictionary of Occupational Titles -
WetFeet - Company Snapshots by Industry plus a career planner listing the ….
monster Career Advice - more job profiles
Most comprehensive Jumpstation for Legal Research on the Web is WashLaw with listings of sources throughout the US states plus more than 150 countries worldwide.
Highbeam
Highbeam Business Articles Research
Google Uncle Sam
Surfwax LawKT - Law firm publications and articles
Directory of Open Access Journals (International)
RefDesk - Terribly cluttered site but some interesting sources to be found…
yellow
…
databases
Investigative Resource Center - Searchable databases & links for investigative professionals
Public Records Online - is a Portal to official state web sites, and those Tax Assessors’ and Recorders’ offices that have developed web sites for the retrieval of available public records over the internet.
Property Data Store - real estate public records and research information portal for property information, deeds & mortgage copies, tax records, parcel maps, assessment records, and public records nationwide.
Search Engines
Search Engines
fill their data pools by self registration of webmasters and owners of websites, plus they are ?crawling? the web searching new addresses of public information. The major engines are indexing up to thousands of pages of a website, analyzing the data (e.g. for ?keyword density?) and decide about relevancy using patented algorithms.
For reviews and inside knowledge about search engines and search technology you should visit SearchEngineWatch - all you ever wanted to know about search technology.
MY TIP
Soople - Simplified Google. Wonder what Google has to offer but you never discovered…
The Big Three
- Google - Google was originally a Stanford University project by students Larry Page and Sergey Brin called BackRub. By 1998, the name had been changed to Google, and the project jumped off campus and became the private company Google.
- Yahoo - Launched in 1994, Yahoo is the web’s oldest “directory,” a place where human editors organize web sites into categories. However, in October 2002, Yahoo made a giant shift to crawler-based listings for its main results. These came from Google until February 2004. Now, Yahoo uses its own search technology.
- MSN - The most recent major search engine, owned by Microsoft. Previously relied on others for its search engine listings. In 2004 it debuted a beta version of its own results, powered by its own web crawler (called msnbot). In early 2005 it started showing its own results live.
The Rising Star
- Ask - in February 2006, Ask Jeeves was rebranded as Ask.com. The butler logo was removed and several new features including search tool box, maps (with walking directions and dynamic address generation) and more “Smart Answers” were added. Ask.com is now an algorithmic engine. While you can still ask questions, it operates using a relevance ranking.
Cluster Search Engines
- Vivissimo - Enter a search term, and Vivismo will not only pull back matching responses from major search engines but also automatically organize the pages into categories. Slick and easy to use.
- Clusty - does not only search major search engines but also digs through Wikipedia articles, blogs and jobs…
Meta Search Engines
- Dogpile - Popular metasearch site owned by InfoSpace that sends a search to a customizable list of search engines, directories and specialty search sites, then displays results from each search engine individually.
- IceRocket - Searches the major search engines, blogs and myspace.
- InfoGrid - In a compact format, InfoGrid provides direct links to major search sites and topical web sites in different categories. Meta search and news searching is also offered.
- IxQuick - Meta search engine that ranks results based on the number of “top 10″ rankings a site receives from the various search engines.
- Metacrawler - One of the oldest meta search services
- MetaEureka - Search against several major search engines and paid listings services, plus news and blogs search.
- Turbo10 - Digs through the Invisible Web too. Option to add a great number of data sources to “collection”.
- Proteus Internet Search - one interface for the search in many sources plus a special character Virtual Keyboard.
- A9 - amazon´s answer on information management. Finds books, movies, people, encyclopedic entries, and many sources more…
- YurNet - offers a great package of tools and options, like a Comparison Search, and Internet Toolbox (searches WHOIS and dns lookups), a Specialty Search, News Search and Web Buzz Search through several notable social networks.
- Monster Crawler
http://monstercrawler.com/
Searches News, Video, MP3, Weather, Sports, Stocks, Advertising, Yellow Pages, White Pages, Maps/Directions, City guid, Chat, Entertainment, Classifieds, Business Services, Military - MetaGer, deutschsprachige Suchmaschinen
http://mesa.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/
Special Search Engines
- Librarians Internet Index
LII offers a searchable and browsable collection of over “tens of thousands” of quality websites, “maintained by librarians and organized into 14 main topics and nearly 300 related topics,” in addition to an excellent weekly newsletter [they have 40,000 subscribers in many countries], available by email or RSS, of high-quality Websites related to current events, holidays, and popular and important issues. New features added with their Fall 2005 upgrade include icons following the titles allowing you to view more details, make comments about, or e-mail the site. Of course, LII can also lead you to Invisible Web databases by typing in a broad topic and adding the words: “and databases” (i.e., biology and databases). - FindLaw
The highest-trafficked legal Web site, FindLaw provides “the most comprehensive set of legal resources on the Internet for legal professions, businesses, students and individuals.” To find an annotated list of free databases on many law-related topics, from their main page, click on the “For Legal Professionals” tab at the top, click on the “Practice Areas” link under the “Research the Law” section, pick a practice area/legal subject heading (i.e., “Health Law”), and then look for “Databases” under the Web Guide for that legal subject heading. - InfoMine
- BrightPlanet - contains “70,000+ searchable databases & specialty search engines.”
- Super Searchers Web Page - This page features a growing collection of links to subject-specific Web resources recommended by the world’s leading online searchers.
- TouchGraph - an unusual way to see search results
Regional Search Engines
- Search Engine Colossus -
- Country Search Engines -
- Search Engines Worldwide - many pics missing but a quite good resource anyway
Directories
Directories
Directories collect sites by subject. To find information you browse deeper and deeper into categories/topics… Additions are made by human editors.
- ODP Open Directory Project - a human edited directory available in many languages, used by Google
- Google Directory - fed by ODP
- Yahoo! Directory -
- MSN Directory -
- Directory Guide - Directory Guide is an extensive catalog of search engines and directories that accept web site submissions. Each directory/engine is categorized by subject and we provide direct links to the Add Url form for each one.
- Resource Discovery Network - Directories by Topics
- Virtual Library
Speciality Directories
SearchSystems Public Records Directory -
Information Sources
For the most efficient use of information sources, you have to understand, how they work. Find details about various sources of information on the appropriate pages.
Sources covered
- Search Engines -
- Directories -
- Databases -
- Yellow Pages & White Pages -
- Invisible Web -
Social Networks
- Blogs -
- Groups -
- Forums -
The Invisible Web
The deep web (or invisible web or hidden web) is the name given to pages on the World Wide Web that are not part of the surface web that is indexed by common search engines. It consists of pages which are not linked to by other pages (e.g., dynamic pages which are returned in response to a submitted query). The deep web also includes sites that require registration or otherwise limit access to their pages, prohibiting search engines from browsing them and creating cached copies. Pages that are only accessible through links produced by JavaScript and Flash also often reside in the deep web since most search engines are unable to properly follow these links.
It is estimated that the deep web is several magnitudes larger than the surface web.
How to find “invisible” information sources?
You can give it a try to search a keyword in a search engine and add “database”. This might show up several sources, usually not reveiled by search engines.
- Direct Search - is a growing compilation of links to the search interfaces of resources that contain data not easily or entirely searchable/accessible from general search tools. Although these “general” tools are essential for the retrieval of Internet based data, searchers often fail to realize that a massive amount of information is not easily or entirely searchable/accessible via these search tools. Material “hidden” from the general search tools is said to reside on the Invisible Web.
- CompletePlanet - is a directory of “over 70,000+ searchable databases and specialty search engines.”
- Deep Web Research 2006 - lists invaluable sources for researching the invisible web
- Turbo10 - Digs through the Invisible Web too. Option to add a great number of data sources to “collection”.
- Academic Info -
- Yahoo Subscription Search - Yahoo! Search Subscriptions enables you to search access-restricted content such as news and reference sites that are normally not accessible to search engines.
Note: You will need a valid subscription to the sources above to access their content. - Public Records Directory - finds hidden sources throughout US and many countries worldwide
- IncyWincy -
- MedBioWorld -