The ability to find what you are looking for when you want it is becoming more difficult as the volume of information increases. Each of the following search engines has been developed to do just that for the research community.

 Rollyo is a search tool that enables online search to be limited to specific types of sites or even a collection of sites identified by the user “..tools to create your own personal search engines - with no programming required”.

 More accurate tailoring of search results must be an area to watch. Delver is attempting to solve two key search-related problems. The first is that current search engines do not take into account the identity of the searcher. The second is that current search engines do not allow users to search for information created and referenced by their own social group. Although Delver is described complexly as “a socially connected search engine” it may be one to watch for a new approach to search in context.

 Scitopia is a federated search gateway to the research most cited in scholarly work (and patents) from 15 leading science and technology societies. It was one of just two awardees for Best Efforts by the Charleston Adviser. The citation from the Charleston Adviser runs, "It’s great to see many major scientific societies work together to create a federated vertical search gateway.”

 Free Patents Online is a site which includes a free search for patents and has a large amount of data and features within it, including the ability to store and annotate patent information.

 Google Patent Search has recently been launched in beta version and currently focuses on information from the US Patents office since the 1790’s.

 A new tool for mining the computer science literature is Rexa. This builds on the existing search services and provides more direct data-mining options than previous databases, for example it,  includes cross-linked pages for papers, authors, topics and NSF grants plus it includes the option to ‘tag’ entries.

 CompWisdom is a specialized search engine for topics on computing, programing, and the Internet. Unlike other more broadly used sites it analyzes pages from the web based on whole sentences, not only keywords. The results are also real, complete sentences see: http://www.compwisdom.com/topics/Bit

 Vivisimo.com wants to change the way search results are displayed on computer screens everywhere into organized search results with document clustering. No more long, tedious lists. Vivisimo clusters search results on the fly into crisp, meaningful, hierarchical folders. Vivisimo can be placed on top of a search engine or integrated into knowledge management applications.

 Search Engine Watch newsletters - This site is for search engine devotees - you can choose to sign up to all three of the 'Search engine watch' newsletters which cover all you (may ever) need to know.

 www.scirus.com Elsevier Science has developed a scientific web search engine with Razorfish - a specialist company based in New York. It searches for both free and proprietary (access-controlled) content and the latest release includes searches for US patents. Web site owners can also add Scirus to their home page - free of charge. Despite all this, Google still rules!

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Last Modified: May 30, 2014

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