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Find it on the Web

Subject Directories
Are small databases where you can search by subject or topic for web sites. They are evaluated and compiled by human information experts with quality of information in mind.
Search Tip: Browse by subject or search using broad subject terms. Keep searches simple and general.

Lii.org - Over 20,000 sites, annotated with descriptions and classified by subject

Infomine - More than 100,000 sites, annotated with descriptions and classified by subject

Academic Info - 25,000 sites, classified by academic disciplines


Search Engines
Are large databases that search the full-text of billions of web pages. They are compiled by digital robot programs called crawlers with no human evaluation for quality asterisk.
Search Tip:Use specific words that will be in the pages you want. All of these search engines accept quotes ( " " ) to form phrases. Use OR (capitalized) to search for either of two or more words or "phrases." Use AND (capitalized) search two or more words on a page but not necesarilly  next to each other as in the "phrase" search. 

Google - Estimated 20 billion pages, with search results ranked by "popularity"

Yahoo! - Estimated 15 billion pages, with search results ranked by "relevancy"

Ask.com - Estimated 2 billion page

asterisk Learn more! Read how to Evaluate a Website from our Research Guides section.


Thanks to the UC Berkeley Library opens in a new window for permission to use content.

• last updated: October 29, 2007 •