R I Arlington Search Links

I have tried to make this a useful page for myself. Hope you find it useful, too. I use Google the most - see in the meta-search engines.

Search Engines

• AltaVista for Web and Usenet content. NOTES: If you just put in a bunch of words, Alta Vista searches for pages with any of the words (logical OR). Putting words in quotes will search for the words together. To find all of your key words, use AND or + in the search; AND NOT or - will exclude words. To find plurals or alternate spellings, you can use a wildcard (*) in the word. NEAR returns keywords that are within 10 word of each other. See the AltaVista Advanced Queries for more tips. AltaVista has added a more focused search called Raging Search; supposedly faster. 
• Excite Search for Web content, Usenet news, Usenet classifieds, and Excite Reviews. NOTES: Mutliterm queries return pages with any of the terms (logical OR). Can use nested boolean queries with parentheses. Can use AND, OR, and AND NOT in queries. Can use plus sign (+) to force inclusion of a term or minus sign (-) to force exclusion.
• HotBot for Web and Usenet content. NOTES: HotBot offers a range of powerful options constructed through a graphical interface. HotBot is part of Lycos.
• Lycos for Web content and much more available through Lycos's A2Z catalog.
• FAST is one of the fastest sites with good responses. Check it out.
• WebCrawler for Web content.
• Yahoo for Web content via a directory of pre-screened sites.
• About.Com a site with some human intervention to organize the data. Sort of a cross between Yahoo's directories and Hotbot's searches. (Good jokes available at this site.)
• Ask Jeeves a site where you can ask questions in English, like "Why is there air?" or "what is the average rainfall of the Amazon basin?" Ask Jeeves will parse your question and point you to sites that are likely to answer the question.

Meta Search Sites

These are sites that link you to multiple search engines via a single look-up entry. Does the term "drinking water from a firehose" mean anything to you?

• Northern Light uses multiple searches and nicely packages the results for you. Recently highlighted in PC Magazine.
• Google uses multiple searches and catalogues the results for you. Selected by Yahoo to compliment their directory structure. Also highlighted in PC Magazine.
• Highway 61 links to 7 including Excite, HotBot, InfoSeek, and Lycos.
• INFOZOID also allows you to use numerous search engines.
• Metacrawler links to 9 including Excite, Lycos, Open Text, and Web Crawler.
• Dan's No Overhead Search Thingy includes many links and has some special Apple sites.

White & Yellow Pages - Free

These are services that help you look up individual names, addresses and phone numbers. Some will allow you to put in an address and get the individual living there.

• Bigfoot an e-mail address finder.
• Four11 now links you to Yahoo's People Search an e-mail address and telephone number finder.
• Switchboard finds telephone numbers and addresses. Don't try for Smith or Jones in big cities; filters are limited.
• AnyWho is a service of AT&T for finding personal and business phones and addresses. Includes a "reverse look-up" if you have a phone number or address and want to find who's there.
• Who Where finds e-mail, phone and mailing addresses.
• InfoUSA 
• Internet Address Finder claims to be good in finding university e-mail address as well as AOL and CompuServe subscribers.
• 555-1212 links to several of these sites. Also has a "reverse look-up".
• TheUltimates also links to a number of the sites above to allow you to enter the data once and search at several sites.

Batch & Paid Phone (& Address) Searches

• DirectoryNet - out of Atlanta, provides directory and call center services
• Reach411 - out of Dallas, provides automatic batch and interactive web look-up of addresses and phone numbers.
• Telematch - out of Springfield, VA, provides residential and business look-ups of phone numbers as well as a number of other data clean-up and "enhancement" services.

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To provide additions or corrections, you may e-mail: Charlie Hunsaker All you have to do is click on my name to send me a message; I welcome feedback on the site and suggestions for enhancements.

Last updated March 2002