Top list of Search Engines of 2016 & 2017 , history and guide

all about Search Engines and how to use it.

A full List of Search Engines in details

Most people don't want three dozen search engines, especially people who are not trained internet users. Most people want a single search engine that delivers three key features:

What Are the Best Search Engines of 2017?

1. Relevant results (results you are actually interested in)
2. Uncluttered, easy to read interface
3. Helpful options to broaden or tighten a search

With this criteria, several of our reader favorites come to mind. These search sites should meet 99% of the searching needs of a regular everyday user.

1

Google Search

Google is the reigning king of 'spartan searching', and is the single most used search engine in the world. While it doesn't offer all the shopping center features of Yahoo! or the human curation of Mahalo, Google is fast, relevant, and the largest single catalogue of web pages available today.
Make sure you try the Google 'images', 'maps' and 'news' features... they are outstanding services for locating photos, geographic directions, and news headlines.

2

Duck Duck Go Search

At first, DuckDuckGo.com looks like Google. However, there are many subtleties that make this spartan search engine different.
DuckDuckGo has some slick features, like 'zero-click' information (all your answers are found on the first results page). DuckDuckgo offers disambiguation prompts (helps to clarify what question you are really asking). Plus, the ad spam is much less than Google.
Give DuckDuckGo.com a try... you might really like this clean and simple search engine.

3

Bing Search

Bing is Microsoft's attempt at unseating Google, and arguably the second-most-popular search engine today. Bing used to be MSN search until it was updated in summer of 2009.
Touted as a decision engine, Bing tries to support your researching by offering suggestions in the leftmost column, while also giving you various search options across the top of the screen. Things like 'wiki' suggestions, 'visual search', and 'related searches' might be very useful to you. Bing is not dethroning Google in the near future, no, but Bing is definitely worth trying.

4

Dogpile Search

Years ago, Dogpile preceded Google as the fast and efficient choice for web searching. Things changed in the late 1990's, Dogpile faded into obscurity, and Google became king.
Today, however, Dogpile is coming back, with a growing index and a clean and quick presentation that is testimony to its halcyon days. If you want to try a search tool with pleasant presentation and helpful crosslink results, definitely try Dogpile!

5

Yippy Search

Yippy is a Deep Web engine that searches other search engines for you.

Unlike the regular Web, which is indexed by robot spider programs, Deep Web pages are usually harder to locate by conventional search.That's where Yippy becomes very useful. If you are searching for obscure hobby interest blogs, obscure government information, tough-to-find obscure news, academic research and otherwise-obscure content, then Yippy is your tool.

6

Google Scholar Search

Google Scholar is a special version of Google. This search engine will help you win debates.
Google Scholar focuses on scientific and hard-research academic material that has been subjected to scrutiny by scientists and scholars. Example content includes graduate theses, legal and court opinions, academic publications, medical research reports, physics research papers, and economics and world politics explanations.
If you are looking for serious information that can stand up in a heated debate with educated people, then forget regular Google... Google Scholar is where you want to go to arm yourself with high powered sources!

7

Webopedia Search

Webopedia is one of the most useful websites on the web. Webopedia is an encyclopedic resource dedicated to searching techno terminology and computer definitions.
Teach yourself what 'domain name system' is, or teach yourself what 'DDRAM' means on your computer. Webopedia is absolutely a perfect resource for non-technical people to make more sense of the computers around them.

8

Yahoo! Search (and More)

Yahoo! is several things: it is a search engine, a news aggregator, a shopping center, an emailbox, a travel directory, a horoscope and games center, and more.This 'web portal' breadth of choice makes this a very helpful site for Internet beginners. Searching the Web should also be about discovery and exploration, and Yahoo! delivers that in wholesale quantities.

9

The Internet Archive Search

The Internet Archive is a favorite destination for longtime Web lovers. The Archive has been taking snapshots of the entire World Wide Web for years now, allowing you and me to travel back in time to see what a web page looked like in 1999, or what the news was like around Hurricane Katrina in 2005.You won't visit the Archive daily, like you would Google or Yahoo or Bing, but when you do have need to travel back in time, use this search site.

---

The Search Engines that Regular People Love!

What Are the Best Search Engines of 2016?

Most people don't want a hundred search engines, especially people who are not trained internet users. Most people want a single search engine that delivers three key features:

1. Relevant results  (results you are actually interested in)
2. Uncluttered, easy to read interface
3. Helpful options to broaden or tighten a search

With this criteria, a handful of choices come to mind. These recommended search sites should meet 99% of the searching needs of a regular everyday user. 

1

Google Search

Google is the reigning king of 'spartan searching', and is the single most used search engine in the world. While it doesn't offer all the shopping center features of Yahoo! or the human curation of Mahalo, Google is fast, relevant, and the largest single catalogue of web pages available today.Make sure you try the Google 'images', 'maps' and 'news' features... they are outstanding services for locating photos, geographic directions, and news headlines.

2

Dogpile Search

 Years ago, Dogpile preceded Google as the fast and efficient choice for web searching. Things changed in the late 1990's, Dogpile faded into obscurity, and Google became king. But today, Dogpile is coming back, with a growing index and a clean and quick presentation that is testimony to its halcyon days.  If you want to try a search tool with pleasant presentation and helpful crosslink results, definitely try Dogpile!

3

Yippy Search

Yippy is a Deep Web engine that searches other search engines for you. Unlike the regular Web, which is indexed by robot spider programs, Deep Web pages are usually harder to locate by conventional search. That's where Yippy becomes very useful. If you are searching for obscure hobby interest blogs, obscure government information, tough-to-find obscure news, academic research and otherwise-obscure content, then Yippy is your tool.

4

Duck Duck Go Search

At first, DuckDuckGo.com looks like Google. But there are many subtleties that make this spartan search engine different. DuckDuckGo has some slick features, like 'zero-click' information (all your answers are found on the first results page). DuckDuckgo offers disambiguation prompts (helps to clarify what question you are really asking). And the ad spam is much less than Google. Give DuckDuckGo.com a try... you might really like this clean and simple search engine

5

Bing Search

Bing is Microsoft's attempt at unseating Google, and arguably the second-most-popular search engine today. Bing used to be MSN search until it was updated in summer of 2009. Touted as a 'decision engine', Bing tries to support your researching by offering suggestions in the leftmost column, while also giving you various search options across the top of the screen. Things like 'wiki' suggestions, 'visual search', and 'related searches' might be very useful to you. Bing is not dethroning Google in the near future, no. But Bing is definitely worth trying.

6

Google Scholar Search

Google Scholar is a special version of Google.  This search engine will help you win debates.You see, Google Scholar focuses on scientific and hard-research academic material that has been subjected to scrutiny by scientists and scholars. Example content includes:  graduate theses, legal and court opinions, academic publications, medical research reports, physics research papers, and economics and world politics explanations.If you are looking for serious information that can stand up in a heated debate with educated people, then forget regular Google... Google Scholar is where you want to go to arm yourself with high powered sources!

7

Ask.com Search

The Ask search engine is a longtime name on the World Wide Web. The super-clean interface rivals the other major search engines, and the search options are as good as Google or Bing or DuckDuckGo. The results groupings are what really make Ask.com stand out. The presentation is arguably cleaner and easier to read than Google or Yahoo! or Bing, and the results groups seem to be more relevant. Decide for yourself if you agree... give Ask.com a whirl, and compare it to the other search engines you like.

8

Mahalo 'Learn Anything' Search

Mahalo is the one 'human-powered' search site in this list, employing a committee of editors to manually sift and vet thousands of pieces of content.  This means that you'll get fewer Mahalo hit results than you will get at Bing or Google. But it also means that most Mahalo results have a higher quality of content and relevance (as best as human editors can judge).Mahalo also offers regular web searching in addition to asking questions.  Depending on which of the two search boxes you use at Mahalo, you will either get direct content topic hits or suggested answers to your question.Try Mahalo.  You might like it enough to even become an editor there.

9

Webopedia Search

Webopedia is one of the most useful websites on the World Wide Web. Webopedia is an encyclopedic resource dedicated to searching techno terminology and computer definitions. Teach yourself what 'domain name system' is, or teach yourself what 'DDRAM' means on your computer. Webopedia is absolutely a perfect resource for non-technical people to make more sense of the computers around them.

10

Yahoo! Search (and More)

Yahoo! is several things: it is a search engine, a news aggregator, a shopping center, an emailbox, a travel directory, a horoscope and games center, and more. This 'web portal' breadth of choice makes this a very helpful site for Internet beginners. Searching the Web should also be about discovery and exploration, and Yahoo! delivers that in wholesale quantities.

11

The Internet Archive Search

The Internet Archive is a favorite destination for longtime Web lovers. The Archive has been taking snapshots of the entire World Wide Web for years now, allowing you and me to travel back in time to see what a web page looked like in 1999, or what the news was like around Hurricane Katrina in 2005. You won't visit the Archive daily, like you would Google or Yahoo or Bing, but when you do have need to travel back in time, use this search site.

---

How Does a Search Engine Work?

The Basic Inner Workings of Search Engines

Search engines are complicated entities. Here is a basic breakdown of how search engines work to bring you the results you're looking for.

What is a search engine?

Basically, a search engine is a software program that searches for sites based on the words that you designate as search terms. Search engines look through their own databases of information in order to find what it is that you are looking for.

Are Search Engines and Directories The Same Thing?

Search engines and Web directories are not the same thing; although the term "search engine" often is used interchangeably. Search engines automatically create web site listings by using spiders that "crawl" web pages, index their information, and optimally follows that site's links to other pages. Spiders return to already-crawled sites on a pretty regular basis in order to check for updates or changes, and everything that these spiders find goes into the search engine database.
A spider, also known as a robot or a crawler, is actually just a program that follows, or "crawls", links throughout the Internet, grabbing content from sites and adding it to search engine indexes.
Spiders only can follow links from one page to another and from one site to another. That is the primary reason why links to your site (inbound links) are so important.

Links to your website from other websites will give the search engine spiders more "food" to chew on. The more times they find links to your site, the more times they will stop by and visit. Google especially relies on its spiders to create their vast index of listings.

Spiders find Web pages by following links from other Web pages, but users can also submit web pages directly to a search engine or directory and request a visit by their spiders.

In fact, it's a good idea to manually submit your site to a human-edited directory such as Yahoo, and usually spiders from other search engines (such as Google) will find it and add it to their database. It can be useful to submit your URL straight to the various search engines as well; but spider-based engines will usually pick up your site regardless of whether or not you've submitted it to a search engine. Much more about search engine submission can be found in this article titled Free Search Engine Submission: Six Places You Can Submit Your Site For Free. It should be noted that most sites are picked up automatically upon publishing by search engine spiders, but manual submission is still practiced. 

How Do Search Engines Process Searches? 

Please note: search engines are not simple. They include incredibly detailed processes and methodologies, and are updated all the time. This is a bare bones look at how search engines work to retrieve your search results. All search engines go by this basic process when conducting search processes, but because there are differences in search engines, there are bound to be different results depending on which engine you use.

1. The searcher types a query into a search engine.

1. Search engine software quickly sorts through literally millions of pages in its database to find matches to this query.
2. The search engine's results are ranked in order of relevancy.

Examples of Search Engines

There are a TON of great search engines out there for you to choose from. Whatever your search need might be, you'll find a search engine to meet it.

• 100 Search Engines in 100 Days: All-purpose search engines, visual search engines, people search engines...you'll find all these and more in this list of search engines, a comprehensive guide to the best search engines on the Web.
• How to Pick a Search Engine: Pick the best search engine for your searching needs with Search Engines 101, a great way to explore more of your search topic, try a new search engine, and search more of the Web.

---

What is Dogpile, and How Do I Use It?

Dogpile is a meta search engine, meaning that it gets results from multiple search engines and directories and then presents them combined to the user. Dogpile currently gets its results from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and more.
According to Dogpile, their metasearch technology "can search 50% more of the Web than any single search engine", as evaulated by an independent search engine expert who verified their methodology and validated that their metasearch technology can retrieve 50% or more additional results.

Home Page

Users will see Arfie on the front page. The home page is relatively clean and uncluttered, with a good choice of colors. The search bar is squarely in the middle of the home page, with textual tab choices right on top of that. Below Arfie, there are links to the Toolbar, Joke of the Day, SearchSpy, a way to view either family-friendly or unfiltered real-time Web searches, Maps, Weather, and an option to add Dogpile Search to your site.
There's also Favorite Fetches, with what looks to be the top six most searched for queries at any one time, although this list didn't seem to be completely accurate (dog flu is a most searched for query?). You might find Arfie's Most Wanted to be a better indicator of what was being searched for by the most people.

Searching with Dogpile

A test search brought back results with combined results from the various search engines and directories that Dogpile pulls from, but there is another column to the right with the question "Are You Looking For..." that had much better search queries and subsequently better results.

Users will notice buttons at the top of their search results, including "Best of All Search Engines", "Google", "Yahoo Search", "MSN Search", etc. Click on any of those buttons and search results will now highlight items that are specifically from that search engine in a column to the right.
Why would users want results from several different search engines?

The ability to search several big search engines and directories at the same time is not only a time-saver, but it's useful to compare results. One of the best features of Dogpile is the search suggestions, because the Suggestions can be quite a lot better than what the average searcher can come up with.

Note: Search engines change frequently. The information in this article is current at the time of this writing; this article will be updated as more information or features about meta search engine Dogpile are released.

Search engines will return dramatically different results for the same search query.

Image Search

Dogpile's Image Search brought back good results, including better search query suggestions.

Audio and Video Search

Audio Search test searches receive results from Yahoo Search, SingingFish, and more. Most of these audio results have a quick thirty-second preview, but quite a few of them were available full-length. The Video Search is also powered by Yahoo Search, SingingFish, and more, and was similar to the Audio Search in previews and full-length results.

News Search

News Search is sortable by relevance and date, with search results returned from sources as varied as Fox News, ABC News, and Topix. The Yellow and White Pages searches are standard, with fields to search by business name, individual name, etc. Throughout all these various searches (except for the Yellow and White Pages), the ubiquitous "Are You Looking For" feature is always there, steering users to better-worded search queries.

Meta Search Features

Dogpile's Comparison Engines demo is a friendly introduction to how metasearch engines work, with a real-time Venn diagram to demonstrate how three different search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN), retrieve results, and how few of them actually do overlap.

Advanced Search

Advanced Search gives users the option to narrow your searches by exact word phrases, language filters, date, domain filters, or adult filters. There is also have the option to set search preferences, with the ability to customize default search settings.

Dogpile: A Useful Search Engine

The ability to search several big search engines and directories at the same time is not only a time-saver, but it's useful to compare results. One of the best features of Dogpile is the search suggestions, because the Suggestions can be quite a lot better than what the average searcher can come up with.
Note: Search engines change frequently. The information in this article is current at the time of this writing; this article will be updated as more information or features about meta search engine Dogpile are released.

---

Where to Find Images Online: Image Search

Updated December 18, 2016

People love to search for images online, and there are many sites and search engines dedicated just to chasing down all sorts of images. Images are one of the most popular searches on the Web, year after year. We use them as part of a project, to decorate our websites, blogs, or social networking profiles, and for so much more. Here is a collection of just a few of the best sites for finding images online.*

Image Search Engines

• Google Image Search: Google's huge database will help you find pretty much any image on any topic that you can think of. It's easy to use, and indexes literally millions of images. Filters are also available here to narrow your search by size, color, resolution, and much more. 
• Picsearch: Find images, photos, animations; the "Most Popular Pictures" feature is especially useful.
• Ditto.com: Ditto's been around for a long time, and offers a very extensive collection of images, photos, art, and more.
• Yahoo Image Search:Use Yahoo's Advanced Image Search to really narrow down your searches. You can filter by size, coloration, site/domain, and more.

Image Search Sites

• Flickr is a great place to go to find a huge array of different photos. Make sure you check if the photo you want to use is available to use on other sites, as not all Flickr users give this kind of permission. If you're just looking for fantastic photo galleries from talented photographers worldwide, Flickr can also be a useful source to utilize.
• YotoPhoto: All free fair to use photographs and images for any project; however, do be sure to check if there are restrictions on the images you decide to use. 
• Fabfotos.com: High quality photography collection; includes only sites with high quality submissions.
• Getty Images: Huge database of searchable images from various leading brands. You can narrow your search to include only royalty-free images. This site offers different levels of image access.
• Hubble's Greatest Hits: Amazing pictures of space objects as collected by the Hubble telescope from 1990-1995.
• University of Colorado Garst Photographic Collection: Amazing collection of over 20,000 images put together by the Garsts as they were filming for Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom television series.
• American Memory Collections:Photos and Prints: From the Library of Congress. Collections include Ansel Adams photography, Civil War, and Presidents and First Ladies.
• Smithsonian Photographic Collection: "Search or browse through selected images from Smithsonian collections."
• Classroom Clipart: A source for free downloadable clipart, searchable by topic.
• George Eastman House: Search through a wide variety of photo and image collections, including motion picture and technology collections.
• TimeLife Pictures: Powered by Getty Images. A fascinating collection of photos and images included in both Time and Life magazines.
• National Geographic Photography Collection: Includes photo galleries from this acclaimed magazine, gorgeous wallpapers, photo of the day, and more.
• JSC Digital Image Collection: From the site: "This collection of more than 9000 NASA press release photos spans the American manned space program, from the Mercury program to the STS-79 Shuttle mission."
• NYPL Digital Gallery: The New York Public Library's collection of free digital images. "NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 337,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more."
• Public Domain Images: For images that are free to use without copyright issues, check out this list of public domain image sources. Users are free to use these within most commercial and private projects. 

Reverse Image Search

Ever wonder where an image you see on the Web actually came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions? You can use TinEye as a reverse image search engine to answer all of these questions. Here's how it works:

• Upload an image from your computer, or copy and paste a URL that has the image you're investigating.
• TinEye comes back with a list of possible sources for that image.

TinEye has all sorts of interesting possibilities. For example:

• See how the Mona Lisa has been used all over the globe
• The Google logo has a ton of variations
• The official Obama Biden campaign logo shows up in a lot of different places

*Note: please read the fine print before using images from any of these image search engines or image search sites. Different photos and sites have different usage licenses, which can possibly restrict your use of their image.