General Search Engines
General Search Engines are broad based search engines that focus primarily on crawling and indexing content from across the Internet. Search Engines of this type tend to be 'crawlers and indexers', meaning that they spider the Web looking for new sites and content and then save it and index it through proprietary algorithms to deliver search results.

Large, well known general search engines include Google.com, Yahoo.com and Ask.com. Find out more…

Web Directories
Web Directories are collections of sites that are organized in a hierarchical structure into topics, categories and subcategories. Unlike search engines most web directories are managed by human beings through ongoing manual intervention and management of the sites included in the directory. Web directories also tend to have significantly smaller website databases than search engines and therefore provide a more limited view of the Internet.

Large, well known web directories include the Open Directory project and the Yahoo Directory. Find out more…

Meta Search Engines
Meta Search engines, or parallel search engines, are not in fact search engines or web directories since they do not maintain their own crawlers and indexers or their own website directories. To deliver search results Meta Search Engines submit the end users search query to a variety of external search engines and directories and then aggregate and manipulate the search results in some manner to deliver search results.

Well known meta search engines include Metacrawler.com and Dogpile.com. Find out more…

Pay Per Click Search Engines
In the early days of Pay per Click search engines they were classified as 'search engines' but in actuality pay per click search engines are not search engines at all but rather paid advertising directories where end users are displayed paid search results which have been purchased by advertisers to be displayed when end users enter specific search queries.

Well known pay per click search engines include Google's Adwords system, Yahoo's Sponsored Search and Miva.com. Find out more…

Comparison Shopping Search Engines
Price comparison Shopping engines have become a highly successful extension of traditional search engines facilitating e-commerce activity and retail sales by allowing end users to compare online retailer prices for specific products from thousands of online shops. It can be said that Price Comparison search engines are little more than Shopping focused Meta Search Engines, however this would be inaccurate since most Shopping engines maintain their own directories of retailers and products.

Well known price comparison shopping sites include Shopping.com, Shopzilla.com and Shoprover.com. Find out more…

News Search Engines
News search engines are a specialized type of search engine or vertical search engine that focuses only on news, some of these news search engines focus on all news categories whereas others specialize primarily on a certain type of news. In most cases these news search engines are actually news aggregators since they pull in news stories from different sources across the Internet and then display them in a single interface to the end user.

Well known news search engines include Google News, Newsique.com and NewsVine.com. Find out more…

Local Search Engines
Local search engines and local directories are directories which focus on specific local markets and cities. Because of the nature of the information local search engines generally focus on helping users find local businesses and information on local businesses, similar to a yellow pages service. Most large search engines also have a local search function where users can focus their search activity on specific cities and local markets.

Well known local search engines and directories include Local.com, Yahoo Local and KeyLocal.com Find out more…

People Search Engines
People Search Engines and directories are similar to a white pages service and are used to find specific people and / or information on specific people such as contact information and other variables. People search engines are usually directories since they tend to have a large directory of people listings from which the search results to end user queries are generated.

Well known people search engines and directories include WhitePages.com, Shopzilla.com and Shoprover.com. Find out more…

Image Search Engines
Image and picture search engines and directories are used by end users to find pictures, images and other visual content on the Internet. There are image search engines which crawl and index pictures and images across the Internet and others that operate more like directories where end users submit pictures and images which are then entered into a database for later retrieval in response to end user search queries.

Well known search engines and directories include Ditto.com, PicSearch.com and Google Image Search. Find out more…

Job Search Engines
There are Job search engines which operate both as pure search engines which scan and index job listings from across the Internet and others where employers submit job listings for indexing and storage in a database of job listings for end users to search trough. Both can play a useful role for individuals seeking employment.

Well known search engines and directories include Indeed.com.com, Jobster.com and Monster.com. Find out more…

Travel Search Engines
Travel search engines allow end users to search through their listings for travel information on Flights, hotels, car rentals, complete vacation packages and more. Because of the nature of the information many of the searches have to take place in real time in order to allow the search engine to display accurate availability information for plane seats and the like.

Well known search engines and directories include Shopping.com, Shopzilla.com and Shoprover.com. Find out more…

Video Search Engines
A fast growing area in search, video search engines and directories have exploded in user interest over the past couple of years. The trend is being lead primarily by enhanced bandwidth and Web 2.0 functionality where end users generate video content that they then submit to video directories and make accessible to individuals across the Internet.

Well known video search engines and directories include YouTube.com, Yahoo Video and Google Video. Find out more…

Blog Search Engines
As blogs have increased in popularity many blog search engines and blog directories have been created to make it easier for end users to search for and find blogs that are of interest to them.

Well known blog search engines and blog directories include Google Blog Search, Technorati.com and BlogCatalog.com. Find out more…

Dating Search Engines
Online dating sites and dating search engines have exploded in popularity over the last few years. Although not search engines in the traditional sense most dating websites have advanced search functionality and maintain large directories of members on their sites.

Well known dating search engines and dating directories include Match.com, True.com and DatingVox.com. Find out more…

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