Search advice

Here's a mega search site worth checking out-and a few tips to make your searching easier.

By -- Modern Materials Handling, 11/1/2000

In a previous column, ("Internet Update: Looking for a few good sites," MMH, February 1999 ), I mentioned the value of "mega" search engines that provide results from several popular search engines on one page.

Since then, I've discovered another mega search page, www.go2net.com . This site has an advantage over some of the others in that it weeds out duplicate results. It spares you the trouble of scrolling and clicking through pages of links that are largely the same. Go2net.com searches AltaVista, DirectHit, Excite, Google, GoTo.com, and LookSmart, and others. It does omit a the popular Web directory Yahoo!, though-a site that is included in the mega search site www.dogpile.com . Go2net's home page also offers news, stock indices, yellow pages, weather, and map programs.

Here are some tips to make your searches easier:

• Tired of clicking the "Back" button to get back to the search results page? When you get a list of search results, hold down the "Shift" key when you click on a link. The page will open in a new window, but your search results still will be listed in the first window. If you want to go back and explore some of the other links, you don't have to click the "Back" button on your browser and then wait for the search-results page to reload. Just go back to the first window.

• Want to do searches from multiple mega search engines? Suppose you have search results from Go2net up in your browser, but want to compare them with what Yahoo! has to offer. You can simply open a second browser window by hitting "Control-N" on your keyboard. Then you just open up Yahoo! in the new window, do a search, and you'll be able to see the results from both search engines side by side in the two browser windows. (You may have to make the windows a little smaller in order to see both at once. Put your cursor over the lower right corner of the browser until you see a double-headed arrow. Then drag the corner up so the window gets smaller.) You can open up three, four, or more new browser windows if you so desire.