Keep in mind that these are general search engines, not specialized or category-specific search engines. Note also that there are many popular alternatives to search engines, such as directories and guides.
Millions of people us these major search engines to find what the a looking for. The following general search engines collectively handle about 90 percent of the searches performed. Obviously therefore, the hundreds of other general search engines can account for only about 10 percent of the traffic between all of them.
AltaVista AltaVista Fast and powerful search site that has built up a solid reputation over several years. It includes many useful add-ons, such as a translation service for reading foreign websites.
Excite Excite maintains a huge database of well over 60 million Web pages, making this search engine one of the largest on the Web.
FAST Currently holds the crown as the largest search engine around, with more than 3m pages indexed in 25 languages. A fast and useful starting point.
HotBot HotBot stormed onto the scene in 1996, sporting millions of pages in its database. Driven by its strong relationship with Wired magazine, HotBot quickly became one of the most popular search engines on the Web.
Google An increasingly popular search site for those who know what they want; ranks results according to a number of criteria to improve relevance. Has it own cache, which is good for finding pages that have disappeared since they were indexed.
InfoSeek Infoseek maintains one of the largest search engines and combines this nicely with an extensive Web directory.
Lycos Lycos has one of the best-known search engines on the Web. Like many other search engine sites, Lycos maintains both directory listings and guides to the Web.
NetFind NetFind is a search engine from America Online. The site is powered by Excite and is definitely a search engine to keep on your radar scope because so many America Online subscribers use it.
Northern Light Northern Light combines Web and electronic document search in a single resource.
PowerCrawler PowerCrawler is a small but growing search engine with potential.
SearchUK A simple well organized site that is a pleasure to use.
WebCrawler WebCrawler features an extensive search engine, Web site reviews, and the WebCrawler 100. If submitting to this site, you have to submit individual URLs.
What-U-Seek What-U-Seek is a growing search engine.