Top 50 Search Engines
Basically, a search engine is a software program that searches for sites based on the words that you designate as search terms. Search engines look through their own databases of information in order to find what it is that you are looking for.

How Do Search Engines Work?
Search engines are not simple. They include incredibly detailed processes and methodologies, and are updated all the time. This is a bare bones look at how search engines work to retrieve your search results. All search engines go by this basic process when conducting search processes, but because there are differences in search engines, there are bound to be different results depending on which engine you use.
The searcher types a query into a search engine.
Search engine software quickly sorts through literally millions of pages in its database to find matches to this query.
The search engine's results are ranked in order of relevancy.

1. Google - Google is a search engine that makes heavy use of link popularity as a primary way to rank web sites. Users across the web have in essence voted for good sites by linking to them.
2. Ask Jeeves - Innovative online search service that processes plain-language queries with surprising accuracy.
3. Lycos - Lycos has been around since the early days of the net and is still one of the most popular search engines. The service employs human editors for some of its listings, complemented by crawler-based results. The name Lycos comes from the Latin for "wolf spider."
4. Alta Vista - An awesome site from Digital, it maintains a HUGE index with powerful and FAST search functions. Coverage is excellent so it is good for broad searching and for offbeat subjects but you can be overwhelmed by too many hits. The Advanced Search is useful for finding images, MP3/audio and video files, and there's the useful Babelfish Translator .
5. LookSmart - LookSmart is the closest rival Yahoo has, in terms of being a human-compiled directory of the web. The high quality of the directory is thanks to a team of nearly 200 full-time professional editors.
6. Yahoo! -Yahoo is the web's most popular search service and has a well-deserved reputation for helping people find information easily. The secret to Yahoo's success is human beings. It is the largest human-compiled guide to the web, employing 80 or more editors in an effort to categorize the web. Yahoo has at least 1 million sites listed.
7. MSN (Microsoft) Microsoft's MSN service features both directory listings and search engine results. Powered by Inktomi, this is now one of the most powerful search engines.
8. BBC - Search The Web The BBC's "family friendly" search engine, based on Google search technology. Results are clear, uncluttered, relevant, and commercial free. "Our results are the ones that best match your search words - not the ones advertisers want you to see." Excellent!
9. GigaBlast Gigablast is a new search-engine that looks set to challenge Google. It's been set up by a New Mexican Software Engineer, and already producing great search results.
10. GO Network Go is the reincarnation of Infoseek, a newly designed site claiming to have enhanced capabilities, with a 50% larger search index and search results pages that are 30% faster. It offers portal features such as personalization and free e-mail.
11. HotBot This search engine has a great many loyal fans. It very often comes up with the goods where other engines fail.
12. Open Directory NetScape's Open Directory Project aims to build the most comprehensive human-reviewed directory of the web, by relying on a vast army of volunteer editors.
13. Teoma Search Teoma, which means "expert" in Gaelic, determines the authority or quality of a site's content, by using Subject-Specific Popularity. Subject-Specific Popularity ranks a site based on the number of same-subject pages that reference it, not just general popularity.
14. FAST Search One of the new generation of search services, armed with next-generation technology. FAST aims to be bigger, speedier and more accurate than the existing major search engines.
15. Multi Search Multi Search is a powerful tool which will search all the top search engines with one click.
16. Webcrawler One of the first and biggest search engines, and it still produces highly relevant results.
17. REX This is a VERY nice site - a little sense of humour, very professionally done.
    
18. HandiLinks This is a great directory. HandiLinks listings are all organized into a hierarchical index and it's fast and easy-to-use. It has extensive categorization, and uses a frame design that aids rather than getting in the way of searches.
    
19. Snap.com Snap.com is a human-compiled directory of web sites, supplemented by search results. It aims to challenge Yahoo as the champion of categorizing the web.
    
20. Scour.Net A useful multimedia search engine. Use it to find audio, video, images and animation Scour.Net takes you directly to the multimedia you are searching for, quickly and easily.
    
21. AAA Matilda The most popular search engine outside of North America. Matilda is a very individual search engine from Australia, and growing rapidly in popularity.
    
22. UK Plus UK Plus features reviews of UK-relevant sites, prepared by a team of journalists. Reviews are grouped into various channels, covering everything from Arts and Business to Travel and Work. They are also searchable.
    
23. Direct Hit This Popularity Engine tracks the sites that people actually select from the search results list. By analyzing the activity of millions of previous Internet searchers, Direct Hit determines the most popular and relevant sites for your search request.
    
24. Dogpile Sends a search to a customizable list of search engines, directories and specialty search sites.
    
25. Britannica Internet Guide This site strives to list only the highest quality sites on the Net. It's now integrated into the Britannicca.com website, so you get a high-quality search engine and encyclopaedia at the same time.
    
26. Go2Net This is a metacrawler, in other words it searches several other search engines in order to obtain its results. Rapidly gaining in popularity as a web portal.
    
27. Alba36.com A human reviewed searchable directory to over 2700 specialty and regional search engines, vortals, portals, topical guides, specialized directories and the best web sites.
    
28. WhosBest.com A search engine that gives ratings for each site.
    
29. ANZWERS ANZWERS (Australian and New Zealand Web Enquiry and Research System) offers visitors the ability to quickly conduct region and domain specific searches.
    
30. Mamma Sends search requests to seven major search engines.
    
31. NewsTrawler Allows you to send a query to one or more news sites from one location. Hundreds of sites are listed, by country and by category.
    
32. EuroSeek EuroSeek is distinguished from other such engines by a multi-lingual interface.
    
33. Your WebScout A popular index of the Net's best Web sites, discussion groups and archives.
    
34. Northern Light A professional researchers' favourite, because it organises material so well by topic. Based in Canada.
    
35. SelectSurf An excellent website directory, that doesn't overwhelm with too many sites.
    
36. BrightGate MetaSearch Searches over 20 search engines using a parallel metasearch.
    
37. NewsBot HotBot's news-only search service.
    
38. UKMax UKMax allows users to search only pages within the .uk domain or perform a worldwide search. It also offers some directory listings, regional news content, weather reports, and portal features such as portfolio tracking.
    
39. SearchUK Lists UK-related domains.
    
40. Global Online Directory (GOD) UK based search engine.
    
41. GoTo GoTo is the only major search engine which sells listings. Companies can pay money to be placed higher in the search results, which GoTo feels improves relevancy.
    
42. Internet Sleuth Allows you to search the standard search engine choices or a huge number of specialty sites, all from the same place.
    
43. Search Spaniel This dog sniffs out several of major search engines at the same time, or you can choose to do the same with an extensive list of specialty search services, such as for entertainment or employment information.
    
44. SavvySearch Metacrawler type engine.
    
45. BOTBOT.com BOTBOT parallel search engine and Web Directory - Get multiple results using advanced parallel search technology. Search the Web, News, MP3, Images, Audio, Video and more. Comes up with some good results.
    
46. UK Index Lists sites based in the UK or that are UK-relevant.
    
47. Metafind Similar to Dogpile, except that searches only go to search engines.
    
48. HuskySearch The author of MetaCrawler continues research into information retrieval with this University of Washington-based metacrawler.
    
49. Mirago UK directory and search engine.
    
50. HealthLinks Massive directory listing over 4,600 health related websites in 150 categories.