Let’s start with some strategies to help make your searches more effective. Regardless of which search engine you use, you could use some simple short cuts to make your search a little easier and relevant. Take a look below for some simple search engine short cuts you can use:
Name of search engine
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Unique features
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This is a search engine for students that only uses 35,000 sites. Spam sites and sites lacking academic rigor are excluded. Also, older sites that are still relevant will not be buried in the search results.
Unique features: Not only can you use the same Boolean short cuts, but all the sites are evaluated by researchers and teachers. Also, in addition to their basic search engine, they have additional data bases for specific functions:
· SweetSearch2Day: SweetSearch2Day: when you click on this link you get information that is relevant for that day. For example, whose birthday is on that day, what historical event(s) occurred on that day, word of the day, poem of the day, etc.
· SweetSearch Biographies: This section SweetSearch Biographies has profiles of thousands of significant people. Great for research projects!
· Sweetsearch Social Studies: SweetSearch Social Studies is a social studies database for quality online social studies content.
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Academic search engine that makes academic information easier to access than typical search engines. Refseek cuts down on the overload of non-academic search results by eliminating sponsored links and commercial search results.
Unique feature: RefSeek eliminates sponsored links and commercial search results and you can still use the Boolean operators with it!
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WolframAlpha is a unique, web based computation engine. The results differ in that the search results will be data driven. Whereas a Google search will provide links to endless information, this search engine will provide data. This search tools is an outstanding resource for math and science research. Provides "Examples by Topic" with tips on how to use the search engine across disciplines.
Unique feature: Data driven results with real time graphs and data.
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