There are a number of very good search engines and successful researchers use several of them on any project upon which they work.  No search engine catalogues all the pages available on the internet (currently there are over a billion of them).  Clicking on the icons below will give you access to some of the ones I find particularly useful.  I have divided these samples into two sections.  In the first, you will find general search engines, including metasearch engines (Metasearch engines search several search engines simultaneously) and specialized search engines which locate images or sound files rather than web pages. 
In the second, you'll find portals and document collections related to history (portals are edited collections of links to other websites.  Many of these are provided by librarians and other information specialists. To Visit a site, click on the image.  A button linking to tutorials is also available below
MURL stands for My Universal Resource Locators. This is a bookmark service which is internet based, rather than local machine based.  This is extremely useful for people who use more than one machine for internet surfing for research or fun.  Clicking on the icon to the left will take you to my public URLS.  One of the requirements for this course is that each person  create a free MURL account for him/herself.  You can do that at http://www.murl.com.  As you discover useful and interesting websites bookmark them in your Public Area.
Google claims to index more web pages than any other search engine.  Yippy has a unique patented feature which organizes search results into folders.  This helps reduce time wasted in searching through irrelevant material
Beaucoup, Pandia, and Dogpile offer links to a wide variety of specialized information on their home pages.  They also provide a search function which questions a number of different search engines simultaneously.  Try a simply query in each of these and compare the results.  Use the one which suits your own style best.
Ditto offers the ability to search for illustrations in formats which can be imported to your own computer for use as illustrations in word processed documents.  Sometimes searching for illustrations is a good way to find relevant text materials, as well.
Alta Vista provides several different search capabilities, including the ability to search for illustrations and sound files.  It also allows the resarcher to select to include photographs, graphics, clip art, or all three in the search results.
These constitute only a small sample of the kinds of resources available.  I hope that you will take the opportunity to browse my MURL bookmarks throughout the course of the semester.
Modern History Source Book provides many documents related to the development of Europe sinde the Renaissance.  The author has provided many other sourcebooks as well.  These can be located by clicking links at the Modern History Site.
PANDIA METASEARCH ENGINE
The search engine business is very competitive, and companies change focus from time to time.  Northern Light was once a general search engine.  Now it specializes in searching newspapers, journals, and other current sources of information.
American Studies 335
New England
Roger Williams University
CAS 120
M, W, F, 1:00-1:20
Fall Semester, 2011
Michael R. H. Swanson, Ph. D.
Office:  GHH 215
Hours: M, W, F  11:00-12:00
T, 2:30 - 4:00 or by appointment
Phone:  254 3230
E-mail:  amst335@gmail.com