IncyWincy
IncyWincy
is next in the line-up of the invisible search engines, and it’s quite
impressive. IncyWincy is, according to its brief, a showcase of the Net
Research Server (NRS) 5.0, which is a portal that can provide a complete search
portal solution. It currently runs on a Linux cluster and crawls over 200
millions pages, as well as some clever algorithmic deep web fishing to catch
the bounty that lies in the invisible web.
Simplistic, but quite
powerful
Point your
browser to www.incywincyy.com, and type
in ‘ion propulsion engine’, to give yourself something interesting to look at.
You’ll receive all the usual, surface-based results, but mixed in there are a
few extras that wouldn’t normally appear, such as the ESA’s Smart-1 technical
documentation, gathered from the depths of the ESA and government databases.
Scirus
A bit of a beast when
it comes to digging up nasty medical ailments.
Should your
search of the invisible web require a more scientific bent, then consider
Scirus, ‘the most comprehensive science-specific search engine on the
internet.’ Although that’s quite a bold claim, Scirus is pretty vast and does
an impressive job of returning scientific, scholarly, technical and medical
results based on the scanning of over 440 million science-specific websites.
The Scirus
search is powered by the Fast Search and Transfer web technology (FAST), whose
developer partners include AT&T, Dell, IBM and Reuters, and it uses what’s
called an inverted pyramid technique to return the results. What this means is
that the initial search is vast, scanning the entire database of sites, and
then with each pass the search becomes more defined and subsequently narrower,
ending in the final tip of the pyramid, the results. The technology within each
phase of the inverted pyramid drills down to seed listings, database loads,
focused crawling, harvesting, classification, and then database querying and
final ranking – impressive, to say the least.
To start
the search, head to www.scirus.com and see
what gruesome and embarrassing medical ailments you can find.
The deep dark web
The Dark Web, also known as the deep web,
invisible web
As with
most elements of the internet, there are the good, the bad and the downright
ugly. The sites above can seek out the good elements and, depending on what you
look for, the bad also. However, the ugly side of the invisible web centres
upon the likes of video nasties, the selling of drugs, unmentionable
pornography and even the resources available to hire a hitman. These are known
as .onion sites, a part of the Tor network, and are well an truly best left
alone as they are rarely policed, if at all. Being a responsible magazine, we
would recommend that should you introduce someone to the invisible web, then it
might be best to warn them about this darker side, just as you would do with
the surface web. Don’t let this scare you off though. There’s a massive amount
of information out there, ready to be searched. So go forth and dive into the
deep, invisible web.
Many, many deep web search engines…
The Deep Web is
estimated to contain about 91,000 terabytes. The surface Web is only about 167
terabytes.
With
Google, Yahoo! and all those other surface web search engines only carving out
about 1% of the actual web, the race is on to come up with the all encompassing
search engine that will scan everything. In the meantime, though, we’ll have a
settle with a board selection that tries to hit as much as possible. Here is a
list of meta-based search engines available to browse from, and in some
circumstances, customise:
SuftWax: This search engine works well for
reaching deep into the web for information.
Academic
Index: Created by the former chair of the Texas Association of School
Librarians, this meta-search engine only pulls from databases and resources
that are approved by librarians.
Clusty: Searches through top search
engines. Then clusters the results so that information that may have been
hidden deep in the search results is now readily available.
Dogpile: Despite the awful name, Dogpile
searches rely on several top search engines for the results, then removes
duplicates and presents only relevant results.
Turbo
10: This meta-search
engine is specifically designed to search the deep web for information.
Multiple
Search: Save
yourself the work by using this search engine that looks among major search
engines, social networks, flickr, Wikipedia, and many more sites.
Mamma: Click on the Power Search option to
customise your search experience with this meta-search engine.
World
Curry Guide:
Nothing to do with curry, but this meta-search tool with a strong European
influence has been around since 1997 and is still growing.
Frazzle.com: It accesses a large number of
databases and claims to have more access to information than Google.
Icerocket: Search blogs as well as the general
internet, MySpace, the news, and more.
iZito: Get results from a variety of major
search engines that come to you clustered in gouprs. You can also receive only
US website results or receive results with a more international perspective.
Ujiko: This unusual meta-search too allows
you to customise your searches by eliminating results or tagging some as
favourites.
