Broken down by the following subject areas: agriculture, business and economics, computing, communications and media, education, engineering, humanities, information and libraries, international affairs, law, recreation, regional studies, science, and society. Each of these subject areas is further browken down into several sub-categories.

Choices for searching: all words in the search field, any word in the search field, Boolean search.

Choices for sorting: by relevance, by date of last modification, alphabetically by title.

Each specialized directory or guide is maintained by an expert in the field.

Law Material is organized by organization type and by legal topic.

Easy to navigate.

Recommends relevant sites according to selections by AOL editors.

Permits searcher to narrow the search by clicking on links for relevant categories.

Full text search capabilities.

Full-text search capabilities.

After search is retrieved, several useful and related topics appear at the top of the screen with the corresponding links. For example, a search for "copyright infringement" prompts the following related items: copyright infringement definition, copyright web, plagiarism, and benefits of copyright infringement.

Full text search capabilities.

Comprehensive "Advance Search" - permits searcher to specify how HotBot treats the words entered into the search box; permits searcher to limit the results to a specific language, to pages that do or do not contain specified words, to pages published within a specified time period, to pages containing only specified types of media or technologies (e.g., image, audio, video, Acrobat, Java, etc.); enables searcher to include grammatical variations of the search terms.

Contains useful listing of categories and the number of hits within each category.

Full text search capabilities.

Advance Search permits searcher to retrieve results contining the specified words: in the text, in the title, in the URL, or in the referring URL. The searcher may also choose to include only specified sites in the search or to exclude specified sites. The amount of explicit content in the search results may be limited if the searcher so desires.

Contains useful listing of categories and the number of hits within each category.

Full text search capabilities (in addition to searches of the title and URL of web pages).

Four specialized types of searches are available: (1) Power Search (permits limitation of the types of documents, subject area, and date), (2) Business Search (permits limitation of the types of documents, industry, and date), (3) Search News (permits limitation of the type of news coverage), and (4) Investext Search (permits limitation of types of documents, industry, and date).

Results are grouped into more specific folders, making sifting through the results must easier. (Useful feature!)

Contains index of more than 350 million web pages.

No advertising - no buttons, banners, or pop-ups.

Suggests useful, related topics to those on which the search was performed (same as Excite).

(MetaSearch Engine)

Searches many prominent search engines simultaneously.

Permits both natural language and Boolean searches.

Can handle wildcards, omitted terms, required terms, and parentheses. ("Ixquick knos which search engines can cope with which complex searches" and translates the specified search into the search language of each search engine.)

Eliminates duplicates.

Connecting links to a wide array of federal, state, and local sites on the web.

(MetaSearch Engine)

Permits simultaneous searches of the following search engines (several search boxes appear on one page and the searcher is required to enter search terms in each box for the desired search engines): About, AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, Excite, Google, LookSmart, Lycos, MSN, Teoma, Yahoo.

(MetaSearch Engine)

Permits simultaneous searches of the following search engines (or a subset of them, if so desired): About, Ask Jeeves, FAST, FindWhat, Google, Inktorni, LookSmart, Excite Precision Search, OpenDirectory, Overture, and Sprinks.

Permits searcher to specify whether the search should include "all" or "any" of the specified terms, or a "phrase."

Permits searcher to limit the number of results per source.

Abandoned sites removed.

Duplicates removed.

(MetaSearch Engine)

Permits simultaneous searches of the following search engines (or a subset of them, if so desired): Business.com, Kanoodle, Overture, FindWhat, LookSmart, Sprinks, About.com, AlltheWeb, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, Britannica.com, Clearinghouse, HotBot, Galaxy, OpenDirectory, Openfind, Teoma, Wisenut, Surf Point, Thunderstone, Yahoo, and others.

Detailed site map helps narrow subject matter to be searched.

Abandoned sites removed.

Duplicates removed.

(MetaSearch Engine)

Permits simultaneous searches of many search engines within the following categories: international, European, Italian, business, news, computers, and specialized categories, such as law, medicine, and software.

Medical information.

FindLaw LawCrawler.

Allows the user to search several search engines for information on current events and other topics. It also contains a built-in telephone book to locate telephone numbers and addresses and is able to retrieve images, news, files, and other parcels of information.

Examines books, periodicals and other media, such as photographs, in an archival context.

Combines the dictionary, atlas, almanac and encyclopedia into a single compendium of data.