Information - Search - Web sites for browsing Internet content

Search portals connect you to information; these sites provide you ways to search the vast array of information on the Web. You can search online according to keywords, subject trees of information, people-oriented listings, user-generated content, or editorially-selected sites. I provide lists of top sites in each of these categories, then I list direct links to the search sites that I find I use the most. In addition, the general reference sites can also help you find answers to questions you have.

• Keyword: Find information on the World Wide Web by keyword queries; Web sites that locate documents based on keyword matches; many of these sites have expanded to searching images, news, maps, blogs, weather, and reference sources such as encyclopedias and dictionaries; some of these Web sites contain or are associated with subject-oriented search directories
• Subject: Browse information on the World Wide Web by topic; subject-oriented Webs are arranged hierarchically according to subjects which are broken down into topics and sub-topics; subject trees are the Web's oldest information structure and were the sole navigation tool used by the ancient Geeks; in a subject tree, you navigate down through successive Web pages to find links of interest; or you can search the annotations in the subject directory itself about the Web sites included in it; see also: user-generated navigation, Top site lists for more selective subject-oriented lists or lookup resources for specific, professionally-edited topic lookups
• People: Find people through their phone number, address, or other means; includes a variety of Web-based methods such as address and phone lookups; see also: keyword for finding references to names on the Web
• User Generated: Discover user-generated navigation sites; a variety of Web sites allow users to contribute, share, participate, and otherwise build or tag information content; this shared content is useful for navigating the Web or discovering Web resources; specific applications include social bookmarking as well as news-sharing
• Top Selections: Discover interesting Web sites based on ranked lists; a variety of approaches to ranking Web sites are possible: editorial selection, user nomination, or traffic flow and popularity; these ranking list sites are useful to help locate interesting or useful resources without having to sift through massive directories or puzzle through keyword search results; these sites are also useful for new users of the Internet who want to gain an awareness of notable or excellent sites
• great sites
  
• Google: keyword and multi-service search; clean interface and fast operation; many specialized search services including patents or scholarly papers and citations; detailed advanced search form; "Lucky" button takes you directly to the first matching Web page; direct links to advanced searching include: Google Scholar, Google Blog Search, Google Book Search; all products have a very clean, usable interface
• Wikipedia: free-content encyclopedia; openly-editable content; supported by the Wikimedia Foundation
• Pipl: Deep Web people / reverse phone searching; uses a variety of sources including material that is not crawled by Web surface spiders; looks at personal profiles, member directories, scientific publications, court records; language-analysis and ranking algorithms; integrates with other people-finding Web sites, some of which charge for detailed reports; amazing--almost spooky

Is something missing or incorrect? Suggestion? Please send a note to johndecember@gmail.com with the subject info-surf.