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10 Search Engines for Students

Find what you need for writing papers, giving presentations, learning anything.

By , About.com Guide

The Internet has made learning almost anything easier, but finding what you're looking for on the Internet can be an overwhelming experience. Our list of 10 search engines includes some of the most popular general engines, plus some specialty engines that might be particularly helpful to students.

Special thanks to Wendy Boswell, About's Guide to Web Search.

1. Google

GoogleGoogle
Google seems to be most everyone's default search engine. It's so popular that "Googling" has become a verb, as in, "I just Googled it," and, "Google Photoshop extraction and teach yourself."

Wendy has created a handy advanced shortcut cheat sheet: Google Advanced Search Shortcuts. Be sure to note the education shortcut: site:.edu. For example, find continuing education pages by searching Google for continuing education:.edu.

2. Bing

BingMicrosoft Bing
Bing is a Microsoft product formerly called Microsoft Live Search. Tabs along the top of your search results allow you to sort the results by Web, Local, News, Images, Video, and Shopping.

Wendy has a cheat sheet for you: Bing Search Engine Shortcuts

3. Yahoo!

In addition to being a web portal, Yahoo! is also a good search engine. You can customize your Yahoo! search page by adding categories you commonly search. Click the little wheel next to Yahoo! sites on the left navigation bar. You'll need to sign in. Results generally start with local options.

Check out Wendy's Yahoo! Education page.

4. dogpile

dogpiledogpile
Dogpile is a meta search engine, which means it gathers results from several engines, including Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, and others. You can sort by Web, Image, Video, News, Local, and White Pages.

Wendy walks you through how to use each of Dogpile's categories: How to Use Dogpile. Go fetch!

5. Ask

Ask.comAsk.com
Ask, formerly Ask Jeeves, is a crawler-based search engine, meaning it sends software programs out to "crawl" the Web looking for information. The nice thing about Ask is that it will answer actual questions you type into the search box.

Wendy has some nice tips for How to Search with Ask.com.

6. Lycos

LycosLycos
We include Lycos here because it's one of the web's oldest search engines. Today, it is connected to Ask.com, and it partners with blinkx for video search.

If you like the oldies but goodies, and like the idea of Lycos, Wendy will help you make the most of your searches: Lycos Search.

7. blinkx

If you're looking for video, blinkx is your engine. It searches not only titles, but content, a huge bonus. You can use blinkx for information or entertainment in categories from cars to the environment, technology to travel, and lots between.

Wendy will teach you how to search, filter, organize, and sign up for RSS feeds: Blinkx, a Video Search Engine.

8. Wolfram|Alpha

Wolfram|AlphaWolfram|Alpha
You are going to love this one. Wolfram|Alpha is a computational knowledge engine. Its search box asks you to enter what you want to calculate or know about. That's pretty cool. You have the options of requesting an extended keyboard, inputting an image or data, and uploading a file.

One of the company's goals is to "collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything."

Read Wendy's 10 Things You Can Do with Wolfram Alpha before you head over to the site. She'll help you get answers to math, astronomy, life sciences, technology, money and finances, music, sports and games, geography, people and history, even cultural events and multimedia. Yowser.

9. TalkMiner

TalkMinerTalkMiner
This is an awesome resource for adult students. TalkMiner searches videos of class lectures, research seminars, and product demonstrations, all three of which could be of tremendous value to you as a student. It currently has more than 24,000 resources to search.

Wendy's blog about TalkMiner: Find lectures on nearly any subject with TalkMiner.

10. Mamma

We saved this one for last because if you haven't found what you were looking for, perhaps Mamma, "the Mother of All Search Engines," can find it.

Wendy has lots of info for you about Mamma, plus gives you her opinion on whether she finds its tagline true: Mamma, the Mother of All Metasearch Engines.

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