5 best search engines for students in 2022 besides Google

How often do you Google information? One of the best search engines in the world is indispensable to our daily lives, especially for university students swamped with course readings and assignments. A few keywords in the search bar — and voilà — the results link you to endless facts and suggestions on a particular topic.

Google might win the popular vote, but it’s far from the only resource on the internet for aspiring scholars. How you find sources for assignments matters just as much as the information you get. For that, there’s no better way to dive into your subject through search engines optimised for academic research — it’s part of developing your critical thinking skills while sharpening your eyes on fact-checking to spot fake news .

If you’re ready to up your searching game, make sure to bookmark this list for future references:

Where you get your information from matters just as much as the material. Using academic search engines eliminates questionable sources in your paper. Source: Philippe Lopez/AFP

Best search engines to use in academia 

Worldcat.org.

If you’re familiar with Google Scholar or JSTOR, you might’ve encountered this nifty website through your university library. WorldCat.org prides itself on being the world’s largest network of library content and services.

You can use WorldCat.org through your student library account to unlock an endless treasure trove of knowledge. It works by directing you to collections of more than 10,000 libraries globally, including the prestigious Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford and The Library of Congress.

WorldCat.org grants you access to various formats in its catalogue, such as old VHS tapes and downloadable musical scores — all of which are primary sources that enhance your research quality considerably.

Semantic Scholar

Need a more precise and analytical method to interpret your sources? Semantic Scholar is your answer.

Powered by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI), this free search engine harnesses sophisticated AI and machine learning techniques to augment its discovery tools. It has a function that extracts meaning and connects the dots between papers, so it’s handy for data interpretation.

You can also say goodbye to confusion in navigating advanced search tools and wordy texts on the screen. Visually, it’s one of the best academic search engines with a user-friendly interface that uses a simple but vibrant design. The easy-to-follow tutorials are a plus to help you maximise your search on the website.

Would you like to plant a tree with every search? Ecosia ‘s unique philosophy lands it on our best search engines list: it’s a social business founded on the principle that everyone can combat climate change, even with a click.

Ecosia channels the ad revenue it makes to support reforestation projects that aim to neutralise carbon dioxide emissions. According to the website, it has planted over 154 million trees worldwide, from Mount Bamboutos in Cameroon to restoring Indonesian forests in former oil plantations.

Its green initiatives aside, Ecosia is ideal for students as it can be added as extensions to default browsers, with an app version for your mobile devices. Environmental sciences students can rejoice: its blog regularly updates the latest scoop in the eco world, so you’re always in the loop on current climate action news.

Ecosia uses revenue from ads to support reforestation projects worldwide, and can be easily added as an extension on your default browser. Source: Nipah Dennis/AFP

Open Knowledge Maps

Scientific journals don’t have to be dry and dull, and developers of this search engine astutely understand the power of visual learning. Instead of getting results in lines of text, it gives you a map with an overview of the 100 most relevant documents related to your search query. The algorithm then groups them together in circles based on the number of common words they have.

It’s one of the best search engines vetted by researchers from prestigious schools like ETH Zurich and Harvard University. The best part? There’s an automatic citation generator for each document you click on, saving you time when formatting your references correctly.

Open Knowledge Maps visualises your search queries by grouping scholarly articles together based on recurring words and phrases. Source: Open Knowledge Maps

COnnecting REpositories (CORE)

CORE is a not-for-profit service with the aim of becoming the world’s largest aggregator of open-access journals and peer-reviewed papers on the web. It has over 200 million scholarly articles gathered from 11,000 data providers, connecting you with multiple research repositories from universities across the world. 

If you’re tired of pesky paywalls blocking access to papers you need, you can add the CORE Discovery extension to either Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Opera for free. This handy feature searches for an accessible copy elsewhere, so you don’t have to scramble for it on your own.  

Popular stories

Finland does early childhood education best — here’s why, 8 richest men in malaysia and how they made their billions, best money-making side hustles to earn you extra income in 2024, 5 types of visas for talented nigerians looking to live abroad, here are 5 free alternatives to microsoft word, 5 websites to download free textbooks, 11 sites to download audiobooks for free.

Reference management. Clean and simple.

The top list of academic search engines

academic search engines

1. Google Scholar

4. science.gov, 5. semantic scholar, 6. baidu scholar, get the most out of academic search engines, frequently asked questions about academic search engines, related articles.

Academic search engines have become the number one resource to turn to in order to find research papers and other scholarly sources. While classic academic databases like Web of Science and Scopus are locked behind paywalls, Google Scholar and others can be accessed free of charge. In order to help you get your research done fast, we have compiled the top list of free academic search engines.

Google Scholar is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only lets you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free but also often provides links to full-text PDF files.

  • Coverage: approx. 200 million articles
  • Abstracts: only a snippet of the abstract is available
  • Related articles: ✔
  • References: ✔
  • Cited by: ✔
  • Links to full text: ✔
  • Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, RIS, BibTeX

Search interface of Google Scholar

BASE is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany. That is also where its name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

  • Coverage: approx. 136 million articles (contains duplicates)
  • Abstracts: ✔
  • Related articles: ✘
  • References: ✘
  • Cited by: ✘
  • Export formats: RIS, BibTeX

Search interface of Bielefeld Academic Search Engine aka BASE

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open-access research papers. For each search result, a link to the full-text PDF or full-text web page is provided.

  • Coverage: approx. 136 million articles
  • Links to full text: ✔ (all articles in CORE are open access)
  • Export formats: BibTeX

Search interface of the CORE academic search engine

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need anymore to query all those resources separately!

  • Coverage: approx. 200 million articles and reports
  • Links to full text: ✔ (available for some databases)
  • Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX (available for some databases)

Search interface of Science.gov

Semantic Scholar is the new kid on the block. Its mission is to provide more relevant and impactful search results using AI-powered algorithms that find hidden connections and links between research topics.

  • Coverage: approx. 40 million articles
  • Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX

Search interface of Semantic Scholar

Although Baidu Scholar's interface is in Chinese, its index contains research papers in English as well as Chinese.

  • Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 100 million articles
  • Abstracts: only snippets of the abstract are available
  • Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX

Search interface of Baidu Scholar

RefSeek searches more than one billion documents from academic and organizational websites. Its clean interface makes it especially easy to use for students and new researchers.

  • Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 1 billion documents
  • Abstracts: only snippets of the article are available
  • Export formats: not available

Search interface of RefSeek

Consider using a reference manager like Paperpile to save, organize, and cite your references. Paperpile integrates with Google Scholar and many popular databases, so you can save references and PDFs directly to your library using the Paperpile buttons:

assignment search engine

Google Scholar is an academic search engine, and it is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only let's you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free, but also often provides links to full text PDF file.

Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI. Sematic Scholar was publicly released in 2015 and uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries for scholarly papers.

BASE , as its name suggest is an academic search engine. It is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany and that's where it name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers. For each search result a link to the full text PDF or full text web page is provided.

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need any more to query all those resources separately!

assignment search engine

American Public University System: LibAnswers banner

  • Richard G. Trefry Library

Q. Where can I find a good website to use for my assignment?

search.png

  • Course-Specific
  • Textbooks & Course Materials
  • Tutoring & Classroom Help
  • Writing & Citing
  • 44 Articles & Journals
  • 11 Capstone/Thesis/Dissertation Research
  • 37 Databases
  • 56 Information Literacy
  • 9 Interlibrary Loan
  • 9 Need help getting started?
  • 22 Technical Help

Answered By: APUS Librarians Last Updated: Jun 13, 2023     Views: 27535

Remember that many open websites are not scholarly . 

  • Always double-check with your instructor to be sure that you are allowed to use websites for your assignment. 
  • Be sure that you know how to recognize a credible, authoritative website .    

1. Take a few minutes to identify the best keywords .  This may seem too simple a step to bother with, but it's a common stumbling block for many researchers.

  • Narrow keywords often work best, especially when your searches are bringing you too many irrelevant sites.
  • Sometimes, though, you'll need to broaden your search to find a more general (but related) website that you can then search within for your more specific topic . 

2. Don't get stuck on Google (or any other single search engine).  Here are the librarians' favorite web search spots:

  • Use library's subject pages . Each pages includes a "websites" section, and each link was chosen by a librarian, so you can feel confident that they're trustworthy.   (Note that you may need to click a website, then search within it for a page that fits your topic.)  
  • Browse the library's open access research guide.  It compiles links to all of the best free scholarly and educational sites.  
  • Search Google smarter.  Use the " advanced search " to limit your results to .edu, .gov or .org domains, which tend to be more authoritative than .com sites.  Google Scholar is another fantastic place to do research (and you can set it up to show you links from our library !).  
  • Target government information by topic at USA.gov .  
  • Look for discipline-specific search engines.  We all love Google, but you can find search engines that target education (like iSeek ) or science (like ScienceResearch.com ), just to name a couple.  Try googling "business search engine" (substitute the discipline that pertains to your topic, if it isn't business) and explore the results.  
  • Seek out professional organizations or associations related to your research topic. For example, if your topic is related to online learning, search for online learning association or online learning organization .  You should see several to choose from -- click one, then search within it for your more specific keywords.  
  • If you come across a Wikipedia article for your topic, take a look at its references (scroll down to the bottom).  Wikipedia, by itself, is not a good source to cite in a college-level assignment, but its articles will often link you to better sites or pages. 

Need help?  Contact us!

  • Share on Facebook

Was this helpful? Yes 73 No 98

Related Topics

  • Information Literacy

Need personalized help? Librarians are available 365 days/nights per year!  See our schedule.

Email your librarians. librarian@apus.edu

Learn more about how librarians can help you succeed.    

AOFIRS

  • Board Members
  • Management Team
  • Become a Contributor
  • Volunteer Opportunities
  • Code of Ethical Practices

KNOWLEDGE NETWORK

  • Search Engines List
  • Suggested Reading Library
  • Web Directories
  • Research Papers
  • Industry News

AOFIRS Knowledge Share Network

  • Become a Member
  • Associate Membership
  • Certified Membership
  • Membership Application
  • Corporate Application

Join Professional Group of Online Researchers

  • CIRS Certification Program
  • CIRS Certification Objectives
  • CIRS Certification Benefits
  • CIRS Certification Exam
  • Maintain Your Certification

Top Research Courses

  • Upcoming Events
  • Live Classes
  • Classes Schedule
  • Webinars Schedules

Online Research Training Program

  • Latest Articles
  • Internet Research
  • Search Techniques
  • Research Methods
  • Business Research
  • Search Engines
  • Research & Tools
  • Investigative Research
  • Internet Search
  • Work from Home
  • Internet Ethics
  • Internet Privacy

Top 9 Education Search Engines for Students

Educational Search Engines

Research is the most critical step when writing an academic paper. It’s nearly impossible for students to impress and inspire the assessor with their academic paper if it’s not well-researched. It needs to contain authentic and genuine information for credibility, and that requires a credible source with authoritative reference materials.

Research is the foundation of successful academic work. However, navigating the vast sea of information can be a difficult task for students. Any student sooner or later wonders: "Who could help me write my research paper ?" and this is where professional research paper writing help services come in. These services offer a selection of educational materials and professional writers who carefully select and systematize information for you. By availing such services, students can be sure that their research papers are well-researched and delivered in the best possible way.

We both know that you can’t get away with citing WikiHow, Hubspot, or Wikipedia in your research paper. So what’s next? You need a list of search engines for students which will provide credible and authentic scholarly material for your use and reference – and for that, we’ve got you covered. Below is a list of the top 9 Education Search Engines for Students that you will find rich in authoritative, accurate, and credible information for your academic projects and assignments.

If for some reason you still can’t find what you’re looking for or you are overloaded with other research papers or essays and still want to provide high-quality work with credible resources, you may try a custom writing service like  www.copycrafter.net/custom-writing . CopyCrafter company has qualified and experienced authors that will deliver high-quality custom essays or research papers on pretty much any subject area. And for now, you may try it yourself, with the help of the following resources:

List of Best 9 Education Search Engines

1.  google scholar.

Google Scholar is a free, customized academic search engine designed specifically for students, tutors, researchers and anyone interested in academic materials. It’s the most popular research search engine for students and it lists academic resources across a wide range of sources. It allows students and researchers to find credible information, research papers and search journals, and save them in their personal library.

2. iSEEK- Education

iSeek is another widely used and one of the best search engines for students, educators, and scholars. It’s a reliable, smart, and safe tool for your academic research and paper writing. Since the search engine was specially designed with students, educators, and researchers in mind, you will be able to find credible and relevant resources that will ultimately save your time.

3.  Microsoft Academic Research

4.  content-writing.net :.

This is the latest technology that helps students with their content writing needs. Whether you need to write an essay, a report, a blog post, or any other type of content, content-writing.net can assist you with its AI technology. You can use content-writing.net to generate ideas, outlines, titles, summaries, and even full texts for your content. You can also use it to check your grammar, spelling, and plagiarism. It is a useful tool for students who want to improve their content writing skills and save time and effort.‍

5.  ResearchGate

If you’re a science major, you will love ResearchGate. In fact, chances are you’ve already searched for certain academic topics in Google and ended up on the ResearchGate platform. It’s a networking site for students, researchers, and scientists and provides access to more than 100 million publications and over 15 million researchers. Other than accessing the information, the platform also lets you ask researchers questions.

6.  Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha presents itself as a computational knowledge engine’ that provides results as answers. All you need is to type in the question or topic that you’re interested in like “What is the diameter of the observable universe?” and the answer will pop up. The best part is it doesn’t make you scroll through tens of pages of results. It doesn’t present search results as the other engines, but it’s great for students looking for quick, snappy answers to bits of questions as they go about their assignments and projects.

7. ScienceDirect

RefSeek employs a minimalistic design, which doesn’t look like much at first, but there is a lot going on in the background. It’s probably the most aggressive search engine for students as it pulls from more than 1 billion journals, research papers, books, encyclopedias, and web pages. It works more or less like Google, but it only focuses on or academic and scientific results without the distraction of paid links. So you can expect the most results from the .edu and .org sites.

9.  Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)

ERIC is a reliable and informative online digital library that is populated and maintained by the U.S. Department of Education. The platform provides academic and educational resources for educators, students, and researchers with over 1.3 million publications. Students can find materials such as books, research papers, journals, technical reports, policy papers, dissertations, conference papers, and so on. The platform receives over eight million searches per month, meaning it’s a reliable and authoritative source of academic and research information.

10. The Virtual Learning Resources Center (Virtual LRC)

Virtual LRC is a search engine for college students which allows students to search and explore educational websites with authoritative and high-quality information. The search engine indexes thousands of scholarly and academic information sites ensuring that you get the most refined and relevant results. The platforms and the results you get have been organized by researchers, library professionals, and teachers around the globe to ensure that students easily get resources for their projects and academic assignments.

The above-named directories and databases are among the most trusted and highly reputable search engines for students to find credible, authoritative, and reliable academic resources. They offer information and references on all subject areas including chemistry, biology, physics, business, social science, mathematics, computer and technology, and environmental science.

Live Classes Schedule

World's leading professional association of Internet Research Specialists - We deliver Knowledge, Education, Training, and Certification in the field of Professional Online Research. The AOFIRS is considered a major contributor in improving Web Search Skills and recognizes Online Research work as a full-time occupation for those that use the Internet as their primary source of information.

Get Exclusive Research Tips in Your Inbox

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Advertising Opportunities
  • Knowledge Network

back2college logo

Table of Contents

Educational Search Engines for Students

  • November 2, 2023

10 Educational Search Engines for Students: From Homework to High-Quality Resources

Educational Search Engines are specialised search engines for finding scholarly and academic information. Students need to cite reputable sources for their research papers or other academic assignments. Usual search engines are good for navigating the vast internet. However, it becomes difficult to find reputable sources such as research papers and clinical trials.

The article mentions the top 10 educational search engines for students, such as Google Scholar, Google Books, Microsoft Academic, WorldWideScience, Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), Virtual Learning Resources Center (VLRC), ResearchGate, PubMed Central, Infotopia, and Science.gov.

1. Google Scholar

Google Scholar was created by Google to create a database of scholarly literature from the web. Students can find different scholarly literature, such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, research papers, clinical trials, and discoveries from many different academic institutions and organisations.

2. Google Books

Google Books was created by Google to browse the index containing thousands of books from various authors and publications. You can search books using the title, author, publication, and ISBN number. It stores information such as reviews, where to buy, sample pages, and entire book information for certain books.

3. Microsoft Academic

Microsoft Academic was created by Microsoft for storing over 120 million publications in its database and allowing students to search scientific papers, research, journals, and conferences.

4. WorldWideScience

WorldWideScience is managed by the U.S. Department of Energy. It searches databases from more than 70 countries for academic resources. You can search for both English and translated academic resources.

5. Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)

The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) is managed by the U.S. Department of Education. ERIC has over 1.3 million bibliographic educational literature.

6. Virtual Learning Resources Center (VLRC)

Virtual Learning Resources Center (VLRC) is an online index of academic resources. It is an alternative to Google Scholar. The index stores the websites reviewed by librarians and teachers on topics such as Art, Social sciences, Social Issues, and History.

7. ResearchGate

ResearchGate is a social networking website for scientists and researchers. It has over 11 million researchers who share their work. The users can share research papers, do projects together, find experts in a particular field, and ask questions.

8. PubMed Central

PubMed Central (PMC) is a free and open-access digital library of academic articles, such as medical research, clinical trials, and analytical studies. These resources are published in biomedical and life sciences journals. 

9. Infotopia

Infotopia is a free educational search engine optimized for students and teachers. It is based on Google searches and searches from websites reviewed by librarians and teachers. It covers various topics, such as Sci/Tech, Images, Games, Health, and mythology.

10. Science.gov

Science.gov is a free search engine that searches for information from 13 federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Geological Survey, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, Government Publishing Office, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and National Science Foundation. It has an index of over 2200 scientific websites and 70 scientific databases.

Final Words

Educational Search Engines for Students provide access to various academic resources to students, including research papers, medical studies, books, clinical trials, studies from scholars, and theses. The top 10 educational search engines include Google Scholar, Google Books, Microsoft Academic, Science.gov, PubMed Central, Researchgate, and others. Each search engine has its own index and database of academic resources and searches through them. 

Utilizing the internet effectively for college students involves discerning credible sources, leveraging online tools for research, and fostering digital literacy to maximize learning opportunities and academic resources.

assignment search engine

Emily Watson

Recent posts.

assignment search engine

Scholarships for Working Moms in 2024

assignment search engine

Associate Degree vs Bachelor’s Degree

assignment search engine

11 Main Reasons Why Students Drop out of College

back2college logo

At Back2College, we’re firm believers that the pursuit of knowledge is an ageless odyssey. 

dmca

for Education

  • Google Classroom
  • Google Workspace Admin
  • Google Cloud

Easily distribute, analyze, and grade student work with Assignments for your LMS

Assignments is an application for your learning management system (LMS). It helps educators save time grading and guides students to turn in their best work with originality reports — all through the collaborative power of Google Workspace for Education.

  • Get started
  • Explore originality reports

TBD

Bring your favorite tools together within your LMS

Make Google Docs and Google Drive compatible with your LMS

Simplify assignment management with user-friendly Google Workspace productivity tools

Built with the latest Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standards for robust security and easy installation in your LMS

Save time distributing and grading classwork

Distribute personalized copies of Google Drive templates and worksheets to students

Grade consistently and transparently with rubrics integrated into student work

Add rich feedback faster using the customizable comment bank

Examine student work to ensure authenticity

Compare student work against hundreds of billions of web pages and over 40 million books with originality reports

Make student-to-student comparisons on your domain-owned repository of past submissions when you sign up for the Teaching and Learning Upgrade or Google Workspace for Education Plus

Allow students to scan their own work for recommended citations up to three times

Trust in high security standards

Protect student privacy — data is owned and managed solely by you and your students

Provide an ad-free experience for all your users

Compatible with LTI version 1.1 or higher and meets rigorous compliance standards

Google Classroom picture

Product demos

Experience google workspace for education in action. explore premium features in detail via step-by-step demos to get a feel for how they work in the classroom..

“Assignments enable faculty to save time on the mundane parts of grading and...spend more time on providing more personalized and relevant feedback to students.” Benjamin Hommerding , Technology Innovationist, St. Norbert College

assignment search engine

Classroom users get the best of Assignments built-in

Find all of the same features of Assignments in your existing Classroom environment

  • Learn more about Classroom

Explore resources to get up and running

Discover helpful resources to get up to speed on using Assignments and find answers to commonly asked questions.

  • Visit Help Center

PDF

Get a quick overview of Assignments to help Educators learn how they can use it in their classrooms.

  • Download overview

PDF

Get started guide

Start using Assignments in your courses with this step-by-step guide for instructors.

  • Download guide

assignment search engine

Teacher Center Assignments resources

Find educator tools and resources to get started with Assignments.

  • Visit Teacher Center

Video

How to use Assignments within your LMS

Watch this brief video on how Educators can use Assignments.

  • Watch video

Turn on Assignments in your LMS

Contact your institution’s administrator to turn on Assignments within your LMS.

  • Admin setup

assignment search engine

Explore a suite of tools for your classroom with Google Workspace for Education

You're now viewing content for a different region..

For content more relevant to your region, we suggest:

Sign up here for updates, insights, resources, and more.

Module 2: Internet Research

Assignment: search the internet.

For this assignment, you will search using the Google search engine and take a screenshot of your search results screen. Follow the directions and then submit your assignment. If you find a step that trips you up, review the module or ask for help from your classmates in the discussion forum.

Instructions

  • Open a web browser (Chrome, Firefox, or Edge) by double-clicking the icon on the desktop (or using any other method covered in  Internet Browsers .)
  • Make sure the page is on the Google search page. Type in www.google.com in the address bar and press the Enter (or Return) key.
  • company culture
  • income statement
  • business metrics
  • Open the Snipping tool by using one of the methods discussed in the  Snips and Screenshots page .
  • Take a rectangular or a window snip of the search results.
  • Save the snip as  BA132_LastName_SearchInternet.png , replacing “LastName” with your own last name. (Example: BA132_Hywater_SearchInternet.png)
  • Submit your image to Canvas.
  • Assignment: Search the Internet. Authored by : Sherri Pendleton. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

Footer Logo Lumen Waymaker

SCI Journal

28 Best Academic Search Engines That make your research easier

Photo of author

This post may contain affiliate links that allow us to earn a commission at no expense to you. Learn more

Academic Search Engines

If you’re a researcher or scholar, you know that conducting effective online research is a critical part of your job. And if you’re like most people, you’re always on the lookout for new and better ways to do it. 

I’m sure you are familiar with some research databases. But, top researchers keep an open mind and are always looking for inspiration in unexpected places. 

This article aims to give you an edge over researchers that rely mainly on Google for their entire research process.

Our list of 28 academic search engines will start with the more familiar to less.

Table of Contents

#1. Google Scholar

Academic Search Engines

Google Scholar is an academic search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines.

Great for academic research, you can use Google Scholar to find articles from academic journals, conference proceedings, theses, and dissertations. The results returned by Google Scholar are typically more relevant and reliable than those from regular search engines like Google.

Tip: You can restrict your results to peer-reviewed articles only by clicking on the “Scholarly”

  • Scholarly results are typically more relevant and reliable than those from regular search engines like Google.
  • You can restrict your results to peer-reviewed articles only by clicking on the “Scholarly” tab.
  • Google Scholar database Coverage is extensive, with approx. 200 million articles indexed.
  • Abstracts are available for most articles.
  • Related articles are shown, as well as the number of times an article has been cited.
  • Links to full text are available for many articles.
  • Abstracts are only a snippet of the full article, so you might need to do additional searching to get the full information you need.
  • Not all articles are available in full text.

Google Scholar is completely free.

#2. ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) 

assignment search engine

ERIC (short for educational resources information center) is a great academic search engine that focuses on education-related literature. It is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and produced by the Institute of Education Sciences. 

ERIC indexes over a million articles, reports, conference papers, and other resources on all aspects of education from early childhood to higher education. So, search results are more relevant to Education on ERIC. 

  • Extensive coverage: ERIC indexes over a million articles, reports, and other resources on all aspects of education from early childhood to higher education.
  • You can limit your results to peer-reviewed journals by clicking on the “Peer-Reviewed” tab.
  • Great search engine for educators, as abstracts are available for most articles.

ERIC is a free online database of education-related literature. 

You might also like:

  • SCI Journal: Science Journal Impact Factor
  • 15 Best Websites to Download Research Papers for Free
  • 11 Best Academic Writing Tools For Researchers 2024
  • 10 Best Reference Management Software for Research 2024
  • Academic Tools

#3. Wolfram Alpha

assignment search engine

Wolfram Alpha is a “computational knowledge engine” that can answer factual questions posed in natural language. It can be a useful search tool. 

Type in a question like “What is the square root of 64?” or “What is the boiling point of water?” and Wolfram Alpha will give you an answer.

Wolfram Alpha can also be used to find academic articles. Just type in your keywords and Wolfram Alpha will generate a list of academic articles that match your query.

Tip: You can restrict your results to peer-reviewed journals by clicking on the “Scholarly” tab.

  • Can answer factual questions posed in natural language.
  • Can be used to find academic articles.
  • Results are ranked by relevance.
  • Results can be overwhelming, so it’s important to narrow down your search criteria as much as possible.
  • The experience feels a bit more structured but it could also be a bit restrictive

Wolfram Alpha offers a few pricing options, including a “Pro” subscription that gives you access to additional features, such as the ability to create custom reports. You can also purchase individual articles or download them for offline use.

Pro costs $5.49 and Pro Premium costs $9.99

#4. iSEEK Education 

  • 15 Best Websites To Download Research Papers For Free
  • 30+ Essential Software For Researchers
  • 15 Best Academic Research Trend Prediction Platforms
  • 15 Best Academic Networking And Collaboration Platforms

iSEEK is a search engine targeting students, teachers, administrators, and caregiver. It’s designed to be safe with editor-reviewed content.

iSEEK Education also includes a “Cited by” feature which shows you how often an article has been cited by other researchers.

  • Editor-reviewed content.
  • “Cited by” feature shows how often an article has been cited by other researchers.
  • Limited to academic content.
  • Doesn’t have the breadth of coverage that some of the other academic search engines have.

iSEEK Education is free to use.

#5. BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)

assignment search engine

BASE is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany and that’s where it name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine). 

Known as “one of the most comprehensive academic web search engines,” it contains over 100 million documents from 4,000 different sources. 

Users can narrow their search using the advanced search option, so regardless of whether you need a book, a review, a lecture, a video or a thesis, BASE has what you need.

BASE indexes academic articles from a variety of disciplines, including the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.

  • One of the world’s most voluminous search engines, 
  • Indexes academic articles from a variety of disciplines, especially for academic web resources
  • Includes an “Advanced Search” feature that lets you restrict your results to peer-reviewed journals.
  • Doesn’t include abstracts for most articles.
  • Doesn’t have related articles, references, cited by

BASE is free to use.

  • 10 Best Reference Management Software for Research 2023
  • 15 Best Academic Networking and Collaboration Platforms
  • 30+ Essential Software for Researchers
  • 15 Best Academic Blogging and Content Management 
  • 11 Best Academic Writing Tools For Researchers

assignment search engine

CORE is an academic search engine that focuses on open access research papers. A link to the full text PDF or complete text web page is supplied for each search result. It’s academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers.

  • Focused on open access research papers.
  • Links to full text PDF or complete text web page are supplied for each search result.
  • Export formats include BibTeX, Endnote, RefWorks, Zotero.
  • Coverage is limited to open access research papers.
  • No abstracts are available for most articles.
  • No related articles, references, or cited by features.

CORE is free to use.

  • Best Plagiarism Checkers for Research Papers in 2024

#7. Science.gov

assignment search engine

Science.gov is a search engine developed and managed by the United States government. It includes results from a variety of scientific databases, including NASA, EPA, USGS, and NIST. 

US students are more likely to have early exposure to this tool for scholarly research. 

  • Coverage from a variety of scientific databases (200 million articles and reports).
  • Links to full text are available for some articles.

Science.gov is free to use.

  • 15 Best Academic Journal Discovery Platforms
  • Sci Hub Review 

#8. Semantic Scholar

assignment search engine

Semantic Scholar is a recent entrant to the field. Its goal is to provide more relevant and effective search results via artificial intelligence-powered methods that detect hidden relationships and connections between research topics.

  • Powered by artificial intelligence, which enhances search results.
  • Covers a large number of academic articles (approx. 40 million).
  • Related articles, references, and cited by features are all included.
  • Links to full text are available for most articles.

Semantic Scholar is free to use.

  • 11 Best Academic Writing Tools For Researchers 
  • 10 Best Reference Management Software for Research 
  • 15 Best Academic Journal Discovery Platforms 

#9. RefSeek

assignment search engine

RefSeek searches more than five billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopedias, journals, and newspapers.

This is one of the free search engines that feels like Yahoo with a massive directory. It could be good when you are just looking for research ideas from unexpected angles. It could lead you to some other database that you might not know such as the CIA The World Factbook, which is a great reference tool.

  • Searches more than five billion documents.
  • The Documents tab is very focused on research papers and easy to use.
  • Results can be filtered by date, type of document, and language.
  • Good source for free academic articles, open access journals, and technical reports.
  • The navigation and user experience is very dated even to millenials…
  • It requires more than 3 clicks to dig up interesting references (which is how it could lead to you something beyond the 1st page of Google)
  • The top part of the results are ALL ads (well… it’s free to use)

RefSeek is free to use.

#10. ResearchGate 

assignment search engine

A mixture of social networking site + forum + content databases where researchers can build their profile, share research papers, and interact with one another.

Although it is not an academic search engine that goes outside of its site, ResearchGate ‘s library of works offers an excellent choice for any curious scholar.

There are more than 100 million publications available on the site from over 11 million researchers. It is possible to search by publication, data, and author, as well as to ask the researchers questions. 

  • A great place to find research papers and researchers.
  • Can follow other researchers and get updates when they share new papers or make changes to their profile.
  • The network effect can be helpful in finding people who have expertise in a particular topic.
  • Interface is not as user friendly
  • Can be overwhelming when trying to find relevant papers.
  • Some papers are behind a paywall.

ResearchGate is free to use.

  • 15 Best Academic Research Trend Prediction Platforms 
  • 25 Best Tools for Tracking Research Impact and Citations

#11. DataONE Search (formerly CiteULike) 

assignment search engine

A social networking site for academics who want to share and discover academic articles and papers.

  • A great place to find academic papers that have been shared by other academics.
  • Some papers are behind a paywall

CiteULike is free to use.

#12. DataElixir 

assignment search engine

DataElixir is deigned to help you find, understand and use data. It includes a curated list of the best open datasets, tools and resources for data science.

  • Dedicated resource for finding open data sets, tools, and resources for data science.
  • The website is easy to navigate.
  • The content is updated regularly
  • The resources are grouped by category.
  • Not all of the resources are applicable to academic research.
  • Some of the content is outdated.

DataElixir is free to use.

#13. LazyScholar – browser extension

assignment search engine

LazyScholar is a free browser plugin that helps you discover free academic full texts, metrics, and instant citation and sharing links. Lazy Scholar is created Colby Vorland, a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University.

  • It can integrate with your library to find full texts even when you’re off-campus.
  • Saves your history and provides an interface to find it.
  • A pre-formed citation is availlable in over 900 citation styles.
  • Can recommend you topics and scans new PubMed listings to suggest new papers
  • Results can be a bit hit or miss

LazyScholar is free to use.

#14. CiteseerX – digital library from PenState

assignment search engine

CiteseerX is a digital library stores and indexes research articles in Computer Science and related fields. The site has a robust search engine that allows you to filter results by date, author.

  • Searches a large number of academic papers.
  • Results can be filtered by date, author, and topic.
  • The website is easy to use.
  • You can create an account and save your searches for future reference.

CiteseerX is free to use.

  • Surfer Review: Is It Worth It?
  • 25 Best Tools For Tracking Research Impact And Citations

#15. The Lens – patents search 

The Lens or the Patent Lens is an online patent and scholarly literature search facility, provided by Cambia, an Australia-based non-profit organization.

assignment search engine

  • Searches for a large number of academic papers.

The price range can be free for non-profit use to $5,000 for commercial enterprise.

#16. Fatcat – wiki for bibliographic catalog 

assignment search engine

Fatcat is an open bibliographic catalog of written works. The scope of works is somewhat flexible, with a focus on published research outputs like journal articles, pre-prints, and conference proceedings. Records are collaboratively editable, versioned, available in bulk form, and include URL-agnostic file-level metadata.

  • Open source and collaborative
  • You can be part of the community that is very focused on its mission
  • The archival file-level metadata (verified digests and long-term copies) is a great feature.
  • Could prove to be another rabbit hole
  • People either love or hate the text-only interface

#17. Lexis Web – Legal database

assignment search engine

Are you researching legal topics? You can turn to Lexis Web for any law-related questions you may have. The results are drawn from legal sites and can be filtered based on criteria such as news, blogs, government, and commercial. Additionally, users can filter results by jurisdiction, practice area, source and file format.

  • Results are drawn from legal sites.
  • Filters are available based on criteria such as news, blogs, government, and commercial.
  • Users can filter results by jurisdiction, practice area, source and file format.
  • Not all law-related questions will be answered by this search engine.
  • Coverage is limited to legal sites only.

Lexis Web is free for up to three searches per day. After that, a subscription is required.

#18. Infotopia – part of the VLRC family

assignment search engine

Infotopia touts itself as an “alternative to Google safe search.” Scholarly book results are curated by librarians, teachers, and other educational workers. Users can select from a range of topics such as art, health, and science and technology, and then see a list of resources pertaining to the topic. 

Consequently, if you aren’t able to find what you are looking for within Infotopia’s pages, you will probably find it on one of its many suggested websites.

#19. Virtual Learning Resources Center

assignment search engine

Virtual Learning Resources Center (VLRC) is an academic search engine that features thousands of academic sites chosen by educators and librarians worldwide. Using an index generated from a research portal, university, and library internet subject guides, students and instructors can find current, authoritative information for school.

  • Thousands of academic information websites indexed by it. You will also be able to get more refined results with custom Google search, which will speed up your research. 
  • Many people consider VLRC as one of the best free search engines to start looking for research material. 
  • TeachThought rated the Virtual LRC #3 in it’s list of 100 Search Engines For Academic Research
  • More relevant to education 
  • More relevant to students

assignment search engine

Powered by Google Custom Search Engine (CSE), Jurn is a free online search engine for accessing and downloading free full-text scholarly papers. It was created by David Haden in a public open beta version in February 2009, initially for locating open access electronic journal articles in the arts and humanities.

After the indexing process was completed, a website containing additional public directories of web links to indexed publications was introduced in mid-2009. The Jurn search service and directory has been regularly modified and cleaned since then.

  • A great resource for finding academic papers that are behind paywalls.
  • The content is updated regularly.uren

Jurn is free to use.

#21. WorldWideScience

assignment search engine

The Office of Scientific and Technical Information—a branch of the Office of Science within the U.S. Department of Energy—hosts the portal WorldWideScience , which has dubbed itself “The Global Science Gateway.”

Over 70 countries’ databases are used on the website. When a user enters a query, it contacts databases from all across the world and shows results in both English and translated journals and academic resources.

  • Results can be filtered by language and type of resource
  • Interface is easy to use
  • Contains both academic journal articles and translated academic resources 
  • The website can be difficult to navigate.

WorldWideScience is free to use.

#22. Google Books

assignment search engine

A user can browse thousands of books on Google Books, from popular titles to old titles, to find pages that include their search terms. You can look through pages, read online reviews, and find out where to buy a hard copy once you find the book you are interested in.

#23. DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)

assignment search engine

DOAJ is a free search engine for scientific and scholarly materials. It is a searchable database with over 8,000 peer-reviewed research papers organized by subject. It’s one of the most comprehensive libraries of scientific and scholarly resources, with over 8,000 journals available on a variety of themes.

#24. Baidu Scholar

assignment search engine

Baidu Xueshu (Academic) is the Chinese version for Google Scholar. IDU Scholar indexes academic papers from a variety of disciplines in both Chinese and English.

  • Articles are available in full text PDF.
  • Covers a variety of academic disciplines.
  • No abstracts are available for most articles, but summaries are provided for some.
  • A great portal that takes you to different specialized research platform
  • You need to be able to read Chinese to use the site
  • Since 2021 there is a rise of focus on China and the Chinese Communist Party

Baidu Scholar is free to use.

#25. PubMed Central

assignment search engine

PubMed is a free search engine that provides references and abstracts for medical, life sciences, and biomedical topics.

If you’re studying anything related to healthcare or science, this site is perfect. PublicMed Central is operated by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. It contains more than 3 million full-text journal articles. 

It’s similar to PubMed Health, which focuses on health-related research and includes abstracts and citations to over 26 million articles.

#26. MEDLINE®

assignment search engine

MEDLINE® is a paid subscription database for life sciences and biomedicine that includes more than 28 million citations to journal articles. For finding reliable, carefully chosen health information, Medline Plus provides a powerful search tool and even a dictionary.

  • A great database for life sciences and biomedicine.
  • Contains more than 28 million references to journal articles.
  • References can be filtered by date, type of document, and language.
  • The database is expensive to access.
  • Some people find it difficult to navigate and find what they are looking for.

MEDLINE is not free to use ( pricing information ).

Defunct Academic Search Engines 

#27. microsoft academic  .

Microsoft Academic

Microsoft Academic Search seemed to be a failure from the beginning. It ended in 2012, then re-launched in 2016 as Microsoft Academic. It provides the researcher with the opportunity to search academic publications,

Microsoft Academic used to be the second-largest academic search engine after Google Scholar. Microsoft Academic provides a wealth of data for free, but Microsoft has announced that it will shut Microsoft Academic down in by 2022. 

#28. Scizzle

assignment search engine

Designed to help researchers stay on top of the literature by setting up email alerts, based on key terms, for newspapers.

Unfortunately, academic search engines come and go. These are two that are no longer available.

Final Thoughts

There are many academic search engines that can help researchers and scholars find the information they need. This list provides a variety of options, starting with more familiar engines and moving on to less well-known ones. 

Keeping an open mind and exploring different sources is essential for conducting effective online research. With so much information at our fingertips, it’s important to make sure we’re using the best tools available to us.

Tell us in the comment below which academic search engine have you not heard of? Which database do you think we should add? What database do your professional societies use? What are the most useful academic websites for research in your opinion?

There is more.

Check out our other articles on the Best Academic Tools Series for Research below.

  • Learn how to get more done with these Academic Writing Tools  
  • Learn how to proofread your work with these Proofreading Tools
  • Learn how to broaden your research landscape with these Academic Search Engines
  • Learn how to manage multiple research projects with these Project Management Tools
  • Learn how to run effective survey research with these Survey Tools for Research
  • Learn how get more insights from important conversations and interviews with Transcription Tools
  • Learn how to manage the ever-growing list of references with these Reference Management Software
  • Learn how to double your productivity with literature reviews with these AI-Based Summary Generators
  • Learn how to build and develop your audience with these Academic Social Network Sites
  • Learn how to make sure your content is original and trustworthy with these Plagiarism Checkers
  • Learn how to talk about your work effectively with these Science Communication Tools

Photo of author

10 thoughts on “28 Best Academic Search Engines That make your research easier”

Thank you so much Joannah..I have found this information useful to me as librarian in an academic library

You are welcome! We are happy to hear that!

Thank You Team, for providing a comprehensive list of academic search engines that can help make research easier for students and scholars. The variety of search engines included offers a range of options for finding scholarly articles, journals, and other academic resources. The article also provides a brief summary of each search engine’s features, which helps in determining which one is the best fit for a specific research topic. Overall, this article is a valuable resource for anyone looking for a quick and easy way to access a wealth of academic information.

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us. We are delighted to hear that you found our list of academic search engines helpful in making research easier for students and scholars. We understand the importance of having a variety of options when it comes to finding scholarly articles, journals, and other academic resources, and we strive to provide a comprehensive list of resources to meet those needs.

We are glad that you found the brief summary of each search engine’s features helpful in determining which one is the best fit for a specific research topic. Our goal is to make it easy for our readers to access valuable academic information and we’re glad that we were able to achieve that for you.

We appreciate your support and thank you for your kind words. We will continue to provide valuable resources for students and researchers in the future. Please let us know if you have any further questions or suggestions.

No more questions Thank You

I cannot thank you enough!!! thanks alot 🙂

Typography animation is a technique that combines text and motion to create visually engaging and dynamic animations. It involves animating individual letters, words, or phrases in various ways to convey a message, evoke emotions, or enhance the visual impact of a design or video. – Typography Animation Techniques Tools and Online Software {43}

Hi Joannah! Here’s another one you may want to add! Expontum ( https://www.expontum.com/ ) – Helps researchers quickly find knowledge gaps and identify what research projects have been completed before. Thanks!

Expontum – Helps researchers quickly find knowledge gaps and identify what research projects have been completed before. Expontum is free, open access, and available to all globally with no paid versions of the site. Automated processes scan research article information 24/7 so this website is constantly updating. By looking at over 35 million research publications (240 million by the end of 2023), the site has 146 million tagged research subjects and 122 million tagged research attributes. Learn more about methodology and sources on the Expontum About Page ( https://www.expontum.com/about.php )

Hey Ryan, I clicked and checked your site and thought it was very relevant to our reader. Thank you for sharing. And, we will be reviewing your site soon.

Sounds good! Thanks, Joannah!

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

We maintain and update science journals and scientific metrics. Scientific metrics data are aggregated from publicly available sources. Please note that we do NOT publish research papers on this platform. We do NOT accept any manuscript.

assignment search engine

2012-2024 © scijournal.org

  • Help Center
  • Assignments
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  • Submit feedback

About Assignments

Assignments is an add-on application for learning management systems (LMSs) that helps you distribute, analyze, and grade student work with Google Workspace for Education. 

Assignments makes Google Docs and Google Drive compatible with your LMS for file submissions. You can use Assignments to save time distributing and grading student work, and analyze student submissions with originality reports to ensure authenticity.

  • It works with any LMS that supports LTI version 1.1, such as Canvas, Schoology, Blackboard, Moodle, and more.
  • You can also use Assignments with LTI version 1.3 for Canvas.
  • Adding Assignments to your LMS might require assistance from your LMS administrator. If you have never set up an add-on application or external tool for your LMS, talk to your IT admin or LMS admin about setting up Assignments in Canvas , or another LMS, such as Schoology .
  • If you use an account associated with your educational institution, terms may apply based on your organization's agreement with Google. If you don’t use a managed account, the Google Terms of Service may apply.
  • At this time, Google Workspace Admin support for installation help and troubleshooting is only available for customers using Canvas . If you use a different LMS, help is available in the community forum .

To get the latest updates on Assignments, follow Google for Education  Twitter and subscribe to the Google for Education blog .

Features and benefits of Assignments

Distribute personalized google drive templates and worksheets to students.

  • Assign and collect virtually any file type, including Google Docs and Microsoft® Word files.
  • Automatically distribute a personalized copy of assignment files for each student.
  • Each distributed copy will be labeled with a student’s name and organized in a Drive folder.

Spot missed citations and possible plagiarism with originality reports

  • Assess student work for originality without leaving your grading tool.
  • Searches hundreds of billions of web pages and 40 million books.
  • Help students learn to support their ideas by letting them scan their work for missed citations up to three times before submitting.
  • For Google Workspace for Education Plus customers, originality reports will scan past student submissions for student-to-student matches within your school’s domain.

Save time grading while providing rich feedback

  • Prevents students from editing their work while you grade.
  • Grade with rubrics to keep grading consistent and transparent.
  • Give rich feedback and suggestions on student work using the power of Google Docs, including margin comments, strikethroughs, and highlighting.
  • Easily reuse frequent margin comments with a personalized comment bank.
  • Grades save to the LMS gradebook.

Get started with Assignments

  • Set up Assignments in Canvas
  • Set up Assignments in Schoology
  • Set up Assignments in Blackboard
  • Set up Assignments in D2L/Brightspace
  • Set up Assignments in Moodle
  • Set up Assignments in Sakai  

For educators

Related articles.

  • How Assignments works
  • Set up Assignments in Schoology or another LMS
  • Educator's guide to Assignments setup

Need more help?

Try these next steps:.

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Searching with a Search Engine

OWL logo

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

A search engine is a device that sends out inquiries to sites on the Web and catalogs any Web site it encounters, without evaluating it. Methods of inquiry differ from search engine to search engine, so the results reported by each one will also differ. Search engines maintain an incredibly large number of sites in their archives, so you must limit your search terms in order to avoid becoming overwhelmed by an unmanageable number of responses.

Search engines are good for finding sources for well-defined topics. Typing in a general term such as "education" or "Shakespeare" will bring back far too many results, but by narrowing your topic, you can get the kind (and amount) of information that you need.

  • Go to Google (a search engine)
  • Type in a general term ("education")
  • Add modifiers to further define and narrow your topic ("rural education Indiana")
  • Be as specific as you can ("rural education Indiana elementary school")
  • Submit your search.

Adjust your search based upon the number of responses you receive (if you get too few responses, submit a more general search; if you get too many, add more modifiers).

Learn how the search engine works

Read the instructions and FAQs located on the search engine to learn how that particular site works. Each search engine is slightly different, and a few minutes learning how to use the site properly will save you large amounts of time and prevent useless searching.

Each search engine has different advantages. Google is one of the largest search engines, followed closely by MSN and Yahoo . This means that these three search engines will search a larger portion of the Internet than other search engines. Lycos allows you to search by region, language, and date. Ask allows you to phrase your search terms in the form of a question. It is wise to search through multiple search engines to find the most available information.

Select your terms carefully

Using inexact terms or terms that are too general will cause you problems. If your terms are too broad or general, the search engine may not process them. Search engines are programmed with various lists of words the designers determined to be so general that a search would turn up hundreds of thousands of references. Check the search engine to see if it has a list of such stopwords . One stopword, for example, is "computers." Some search engines allow you to search stopwords with a specific code (for Google, entering a "+" before the word allows you to search for it).

If your early searches turn up too many references, try searching some relevant ones to find more specific or exact terms. You can start combining these specific terms with NOT (see the section on Boolean operators below) when you see which terms come up in references that are not relevant to your topic. In other words, keep refining your search as you learn more about the terms.

You can also try to make your terms more precise by checking the online catalog of a library. For example, check THOR+ , the Purdue University Library online catalog, and try their subject word search. Or try searching the term in the online databases in the library.

Most search engines now have "Advanced Search" features. These features allow you to use Boolean operators (below) as well as specify other details like date, language, or file type.

Know Boolean operators

Most search engines allow you to combine terms with words (referred to as Boolean operators) such as "and," "or," or "not." Knowing how to use these terms is very important for a successful search. Most search engines will allow you to apply the Boolean operators in an "advanced search" option.

AND is the most useful and most important term. It tells the search engine to find your first word AND your second word or term. AND can, however, cause problems, especially when you use it with phrases or two terms that are each broad in themselves or likely to appear together in other contexts.

For example, if you'd like information about the basketball team Chicago Bulls and type in "Chicago AND Bulls," you will get references to Chicago and to bulls. Since Chicago is the center of a large meat packing industry, many of the references will be about this since it is likely that "Chicago" and "bull" will appear in many of the references relating to the meat-packing industry.

Use OR when a key term may appear in two different ways.

For example, if you want information on sudden infant death syndrome, try "sudden infant death syndrome OR SIDS."

OR is not always a helpful term because you may find too many combinations with OR. For example, if you want information on the American economy and you type in "American OR economy," you will get thousands of references to documents containing the word "American" and thousands of unrelated ones with the word "economy."

NEAR is a term that can only be used on some search engines, and it can be very useful. It tells the search engine to find documents with both words but only when they appear near each other, usually within a few words.

For example, suppose you were looking for information on mobile homes, almost every site has a notice to "click here to return to the home page." Since "home" appears on so many sites, the search engine will report references to sites with the word "mobile" and "click here to return to the home page" since both terms appear on the page. Using NEAR would eliminate that problem.

NOT tells the search engine to find a reference that contains one term but not the other. This is useful when a term refers to multiple concepts.

For example, if you are working on an informative paper on eagles, you may encounter a host of Web sites that discuss the football team the Philadelphia Eagles, instead. To omit the football team from your search results, you could search for "eagles NOT Philadelphia."

  • Do Not Sell My Personal Info

Register For Free

  •  ⋅ 

23 Great Search Engines You Can Use Instead Of Google

Are you looking for alternative search engines & chatbots to use? Here's an analysis of multiple options so you can try each one and see how it can improve your search experience.

assignment search engine

For over two decades, Google has been the search engine that most people use for everyday searches, product research, and staying up to date on the latest news.

Because of this market dominance, Google has also been the main search engine of focus for SEO and marketing professionals.

However, following the introduction of ChatGPT and Bing Chat , Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin reportedly returned to take an active role in Google’s plans to add chatbot features to Google Search.

Shortly after that, around May of 2023, Google introduced the chatbot Bard and Search Generative Experience in Google Search. As of writing this article, Google SGE is available in Google Labs only, and may roll out this year.

The next few years in search engine development will certainly be interesting.

However, no matter what happens, there are still several alternative search engines that offer distinct advantages over Google, such as enhanced privacy, specialized content, unique algorithms, and tailored user experiences.

Here are 20 of the best alternative search engines you can try.

AI-Powered Search Engines

Where search engines include AI chatbots based on large language models, they become prone to errors and hallucinations .

Always verify critical information you get from AI-based search engines, such as medical, financial, legal, safety, etc., using authoritative sources.

[Editor’s note: Creating content using generative AI is subject to the implications of a number of unresolved legal proceedings , and you should avoid publishing generative AI outputs as your own content.]

1. Bing.com

Bing.com

As of December 2023, Microsoft Bing sites handled 7.1% of all search queries in the United States.

One could argue that Bing outperforms Google in certain respects.

For starters, Bing has a rewards program that allows one to accumulate points while searching. These points are redeemable at the Microsoft and Windows stores, which is a nice perk.

In my view, the Bing visual search API is superior to its rivals and much more intuitive.

Bing Visual Search

Bing carries that same clean user experience to video, making it the go-to source for video searches without a YouTube bias.

On February 7, 2023 , Bing announced an all-new, AI-powered version of its search engine called “ Bing Chat ,” which is now called Copilot .  The stated goal is to “deliver better search, more complete answers, a new chat experience, and the ability to generate content.”

Copilot (formerly Bing Chat)

According to Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft, there are 10 billion search queries a day, but approximately half of those go unanswered. Bing is looking to fill that void.

2. Perplexity.ai

Perplexity.ai

Perplexity.ai , founded in 2022 , is an innovative alternative to Google that provides contextually rich answers and has 10 million monthly active users.

Unlike traditional search engines that primarily link to webpages, Perplexity.ai is a chatbot that directly answers questions by citing sources from which it fetches information, with an option to ask follow-up questions.

Perplexity.ai search result example

This feature allows users to delve deeper into their initial queries by asking subsequent, related questions. This interactive approach mimics a conversational style, making it easier for users to refine their search and get more precise answers.

This evolving, dialog-based search experience positions Perplexity.ai as a compelling choice for users seeking a more intuitive and responsive search tool. Below is the feedback from Tobi Lütke , the CEO of Shopify, on Perplexity.ai.

Screenshot from x.com

However, since it uses LLMs for answer extraction, it can hallucinate, leading to incorrect or misleading answers.

Search Engine 'You'

You.com is an AI-powered search engine founded by Richard Socher , a prominent natural language processing (NLP) researcher and former chief scientist of Salesforce.

The site operates in two modes: a personal mode and a private mode.

In personal mode, users can configure their source preferences.  While in private mode, they enjoy a completely untraceable experience; no telemetry data is recorded.

The company also offers a Chrome extension , AI-powered image generation , and YouWrite , an AI writing assistant.

The open search platform encourages developers to build apps and contribute to a more open and collaborative internet.

A Revenue-Sharing Search Engine

Screenshot from Yep.com

Yep.com (by Ahrefs) promotes itself as being a search engine with a difference that emphasizes user privacy by not tracking users or selling their data.

It monitors the frequency of specific word searches and the popularity of certain links in terms of clicks. However, it doesn’t compile a personal profile for the purpose of targeted advertising.

It is designed to directly reward and compensate content creators by using a 90/10 revenue share business model.

This means that 90% of all advertising revenue goes directly to the creators of content, allowing them to earn money for their work.

In addition, this business model allows users to directly support their favorite content creators and ensures that content creators are fairly compensated.

A Copyright-Free Search Engine

5. openverse.

Screenshot from openverse.org

Openverse should be your first stop on the hunt for nearly any type of copyright-free content.

While Google provides a broader range of search results, Openverse stands out with its focus on a vast, searchable collection of open-source media, including images, audio, and videos.

This search engine is perfect if you need music for a video, an image for a blog post, or anything else without worrying about angry artists coming after you for ripping off their work.

Mainstream Search Engines

Mainstream search engines are the Google alternatives that have managed to maintain a modest market share over the past several years.

6. Yahoo.com

Screenshot from Yahoo.com

As of December 2023, Yahoo.com (Verizon Media) had a search market share of 2.37% in the US.

Yahoo’s strength is in diversification by offering services like email, news, finance, and more in addition to search.

Yahoo has been innovating and evolving for more than two decades.

It made a cryptic tweet on January 20 about making search cool again but did not take me up on my request to explain what that means.

Tweet

Ecosia’s primary distinguishing feature is its commitment to using ad revenue for environmental purposes, specifically tree planting.

The company is a not-for-profit business and dedicates 100% of its profits to the planet, collaborating with local communities to plant and care for trees around the world.

It partners with Microsoft’s Bing to use its search index and web advertisement and offers a browser extension for quicker access to the search engine.

Screenshot from aol.com

AOL Search is one of the first search engines on the Internet, with a market share of 0.08% in the US.

It relies on partnerships with Google and Bing for its search results.

Unlike Google’s broad focus, AOL leans towards curated content, prioritizing news, entertainment, and a mix of AOL-owned, syndicated, and external website results.

While AOL tracks user data to personalize its advertising, it’s generally considered less sophisticated compared to Google. Its targeting relies more on broad demographics and interests than the highly granular individual profiles Google often builds.

Privacy-Focused Search Engines

Privacy is an increasingly important issue among internet users.

Privacy-focused search engines prioritize users’ privacy, and their appeal is that they do not track users’ activities or collect personal data.

Some of the most popular include:

9. DuckDuckGo

Screenshot from DuckDuckGo

As of December 2023, DuckDuckGo had a search market share of 1.77% in the United States.

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that could also fit into the mainstream category, but the primary “selling feature” is that it doesn’t collect or store any of your personal information .

Unlike Google, which collects extensive user data to personalize search results and advertisements, DuckDuckGo does not track or profile its users. This means that when you search on DuckDuckGo, your activity remains anonymous.

Because DuckDuckGo does not track search history or create user profiles, it does not offer filter options based on a user’s search history profile, and there are no persistent targeted ads.

That means you can run your searches in peace without having to worry about the boogeyman watching you through your computer screen.

DuckDuckGo is the perfect choice for those who wish to keep their browsing habits and personal information private.

DuckDuckGo Lite is the mobile version.

10. Startpage

Screenshot from Startpage

Startpage is a search engine aggregation and does not crawl the web itself.

Instead, it utilizes a metasearch approach , fetching results from multiple search engines, including Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc., and prioritizing links that appear in all.

It’s a great choice for those who prefer Google’s search results but aren’t keen on having their search history tracked and stored.

It also includes a URL generator, proxy service, and HTTPS support.

The URL generator is especially useful because it eliminates the need to collect cookies. Instead, it remembers your settings in a way that promotes privacy.

11. Swisscows

Screenshot from Swisscows.com

Swisscows is a unique option on this list, billing itself as a family-friendly semantic search engine.

It utilizes Bing for its web search capabilities but has also developed its own index for the German language edition.

It also prides itself on respecting users’ privacy, never collecting, storing, or tracking data.

It uses artificial intelligence to determine the context of a user’s query.

Over time, Swisscows promises to answer your questions with surprising accuracy.

Screenshot from Gibiru.com

According to its website, Gibiru features “Uncensored Private Search” with no retargeting and no selling of private data.

It claims its search results are sourced from a modified Google algorithm, so users are able to query the information they seek without worrying about Google’s tracking activities.

Gibiru earns commissions when users buy something or take action through its search results, aligning with its privacy-centric approach by not relying on personal data for advertising.

Screenshot from Brave.com

In 2023, Brave Search achieved full independence from other search engines like Bing. It now operates solely on its own index, a move that emphasizes user privacy and transparency in search results.

Brave Search has experienced rapid growth; as of January 2024, it had 24.57 million daily active users. This growth reflects the increasing popularity of privacy-focused search engines.

It features free video calls, offline playlists, and a customizable news feed.

Advanced security features like IPFS integration, Tor (Onion Routing), and a crypto wallet are also available.

Brave offers rewards for opting into privacy-preserving ads. It claims over 65 million people use its browser each month for a faster and safer web experience.

Knowledge-Based Search Engines

14. wiki.com.

Wiki.com

Wiki.com pulls its results from thousands of wikis on the net.

It is the perfect search engine for those who appreciate community-led information, as found on sites like Wikipedia.

15. X (Formerly Twitter)

Screenshot from X

X is hard to beat as a real-time search engine.

It’s the perfect place to go for minute-by-minute updates in case of an emergency.

Google will catch up eventually, but nothing beats a tweet in the heat of the moment.

To make the most of it, check out our guide to X/Twitter Advanced Search .

16. SlideShare

Screenshot from SlideShare

SlideShare allows you to search for documented slideshow presentations.

You can also search for ebooks and PDFs, making it an excellent tool if you have a business presentation to prepare for.

SlideShare also allows you to save slides and even download the entire slideshow for use on your local computer.

17. Wayback Machine

Screenshot from archive

Internet Archive, a.k.a. the Wayback Machine , is great for researching old websites, but it’s also so much more.

As the name implies, this search engine queries a massive collection of documented material, including millions of free videos, books, music, and software.

Essentially, the Internet Archive is a vast online library where you can access just about anything you could imagine.

Specialized Search Engines

Specialized search engines cater to particular needs, providing results based on specific criteria. For example:

18. WolframAlpha

Screenshot from WolframAlpha.com

WolframAlpha is a computational knowledge engine that allows you to compute answers to problems and search through expert-level data on a variety of subjects, from algebra to words and linguistics.

It also offers Pro features for individuals, students, and educators who need professional-grade computation and analysis of imported data.

Pricing starts at $5.49 per month.

19. LinkedIn

Screenshot from Linkedin

LinkedIn, recognized as a professional networking platform, is increasingly being utilized as a business-focused search engine which has 61 million searches a week.

LinkedIn ‘s search algorithm for organizations considers the uniqueness and specificity of an organization’s LinkedIn Page name, as generic names tend to yield broad, less relevant results.

For instance, an organization named “Innovative Tech Solutions” would likely rank higher than one named “Professional Technology Services” due to the uniqueness of the name.

However, overloading a profile with keywords can be counterproductive, as it might trigger spam detection algorithms and negatively impact search visibility.

The algorithm also factors in the number of Page followers, connections between the Page and the searcher, the activity level on the Page, and the ratio of relevant search terms in the organization’s name.

International Search Engines

International search engines cater to specific regions and provide results based on local language and culture.

Some popular international search engines include:

Screenshot from Baidu.com

Baidu is the largest search engine in China and has a 66% market share there.

Like Google, it offers a broad range of services, including maps, music, videos, and an app store.

Baidu also has a mobile browser and mobile app.

Screenshot from Yandex

Yandex is used by more than 69% of Russian internet users. It is also used in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Ukraine.

Yandex is an overall easy-to-use search engine .

As a bonus, it offers a suite of some pretty  cool tools .

It had a data leak in January 2023, leaving many speculating about the relevance of what was revealed.

Screenshot from Sogou

Sogou is a Chinese search engine that is growing in popularity and has a 5% market share in China.

Sogou Search is an interactive search engine supporting WeChat, article search, English search and translation, and more.

It prides itself on providing users with professional, accurate, and convenient search through self-developed artificial intelligence algorithms.

Naver

Naver is a popular search engine in South Korea with a 34% market share in the country. It offers a range of services, including blogs, news, music, and shopping.

It also has a mobile app for searching on the go.

Naver is a great option for those looking for a search engine tailored to the Korean market.

The Takeaway

Google may be the most popular choice in search engines, but it may not always be the best choice, depending on your needs and priorities.

Alternative search engines can offer a wide range of benefits, including a better search experience and higher levels of privacy.

Nonetheless, do yourself a favor and give some of these a try.

More Resources:

  • How Search Engines Use Machine Learning: 9 Things We Know For Sure
  • ChatGPT & Search? NeevaAI’s Real-Time AI Search Is Already Here [Podcast]
  • How Search Engines Work
  • Meet The 7 Most Popular Search Engines In The World

Featured Image: Dilok Klaisataporn/Shutterstock

How can I switch to an alternative search engine?

Switching to an alternative search engine is a relatively simple process. Simply change your default search engine in your web browser to the desired search engine.

How do private search engines make money?

Unlike mainstream search engines that may use extensive data for personalized ads, private search engines rely on search terms for contextual ads, affiliate links for purchases via their platform, and user donations for funding.

Looking for a Content Marketing Solution to Increase Traffic and Revenue? I’m the founder of Measurable SEO and former COO ...

Subscribe To Our Newsletter.

Conquer your day with daily search marketing news.

TUS Logo

Information Search Strategy

How to find materials: information literacy, information sources, searching online best strategies, boolean and concept building, database searching tips.

assignment search engine

Concept Building

assignment search engine

  • Concepts and Synonyms
  • Database and Personal Research tips
  • The Boolean Machien

AND, OR and NOT

You can use the search operators  AND, OR  and  NOT  to  combine search terms . These are the most commonly known and used operators.

The operators  AND  and  NOT limit the number of results  from a search. The operator  OR  does the opposite; it  increases the number of results .

  • Endangered  AND  birds : combines these two words
  • Endangered  OR  birds : searches for the words endangered OR birds. This search will produce more results. (Tip: the operator “OR” can also be used to include different spellings and translations or synonyms in the search).
  • Endangered  NOT  birds : searches for the word ‘endangered’ and excludes the word ‘birds’.

To see how this works, take a look at  The Boolean machine . Move your cursor over the operators AND, OR and NOT to see how they determine your search.

You can also combine more than two search terms. Use brackets to indicate the priority. For example (Money OR inflation) AND banking.

I want to search for for an essay titled: " Discuss the effect fo antioxidants on athletic performance "

I can do an 'Advanced Search' this means there will be a number of concept search boxes available with AND between them

Remember the more concepts we combine the fewer and more specific the search results

Within a concept box we can add different variants of similar words (Synonyms) with OR between them to increase the search results

Example of a practical use of 'Concepts' & Synonyms 

undefined

On college webpage at   http://www.ait.ie/  

Click on Library on right under quick links

Click: E resources (upper right) and then on Online Databases

Main Science databases include the EBSCO databases (CINAHL, Academic Search, AMED, SocINDEX) and HEALTH RESEARCH premier, also the Science Direct Database; and free databases such as PubMed and Google Scholar.

EBSCO is made up of sub databases; CINAHL, AMED, Academic Search, and Medline, and SocIndex 

Discover@AIT is not a database but a search engine which searches across different databases however the searching principles are the same:

• Decide on keywords, which cover all or part of the meaning of your research.

• Initially select 2 or 3 words which together sum up the meaning of the essay (or part) and use these in separate search boxes

• When selecting keywords start simply; use two or three simple key words or phrases; then you can adjust the search depending on the number of results. 

• In EBSCO, Google scholar (best searched on campus as it links to college databases), and Discover@AIT  you can put key phases in inverted commas such as “student nurse” or “communication barriers”; this will ensure that the phrase, rather than the separate words are searched. 

• If you get a lot of results make the search more specific by adding another keyword or by changing the search parameters to TITLE or ABSTRACT.

• After the preliminary search type you should expand your keywords. Eventually you may have 10 or more different keywords that you can try in combination of 2 to 3 at a time in the different databases. Remember different keywords will give optimum results in different databases.

• Look at the keywords or subject terms in relevant articles in your results (these are usually listed in the result summaries under the title) and consider adding these to your search keyword list - also you can just click on the title of the article to get a fuller list of keywords used

• In some databases certain SUBJECT searches will be suggested depending on your initial search which can be very helpful. Remember a SUBJECT is what the main topic of an article is, so all the results will be relevant. In EBSCO simply click on the subject thesaurus or Subject Major heading on the left of the main screen

• You may then decide to rerun the search with different keywords or Subject areas

• Also check Discover@AIT and Google scholar for the article as these link to other free resources

• For medical / Biological articles also check Pubmed and click on the free full text limiter – this limiter is on the left of the results screen.

• To look at full text for any article click on PDF full text link – you can e mail articles to your student e mail from most databases or print or save using the print and save shortcuts. 

• You can save results and also set up e mail subject alerts by setting up a personal login on the library databases 

• If you find a very relevant article in any database do check the reference list at the end of the article; you can search for journal title on the main library page to see if AIT holds the journal referenced or if AIT has a link to it. 

• NOTE: If the journal title is in abbreviated format simply type the abbreviation into a google search with the word ‘journal’ beside it and the full title will appear

• Pubmed has a ‘Related citation’ link on its searches to help you find similar articles

• Google scholar has a ‘Cited by’ and Cited in’ function which can also be used to find similar material.

Double click on ‘EBSCO Databases-Search All’ and enter your login in information when prompted. Click on EBSCO HOST WEB: Click on tick boxes beside all relevant databases in EBSCO: (information given as to contents). Sign in to create alerts and save searches.

SCIENCE DIRECT

Choose advanced search: Sign in to create alerts and save searches

Enter keywords or Key phases: Use Free full text filter on left: Sign in to create alerts and save searches

GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Enter keywords or Key phases: Sign in to create alerts and save searches

OTHER FREE DATABASES

Click on the ‘eResources’ tab and then on ‘eJournals’ link, and scroll down to the science section. ‘Highwire’ and ‘BioMed Central’ are examples of good free databases. 

Also click on the ‘eResources’ tab and then on the ‘Institutional repositories’ link for free resources such as RIAN, Ethos (theses) and  LENUS

Lenus  www.lenus .ie is a good source for Irish material in the healthcare sector.

MORE FREE ONLINE RESOURCES

Check the  AIT Library Subject guide  in your subject area for a list of online links

  • Last Updated: Mar 1, 2024 2:10 PM
  • URL: https://ait.libguides.com/informationliteracy

Search Engine

Assignment written by Julie Zelenski

An introduction to search engines

google search home page

Search engines are one of the most influential developments of the modern internet age and have completely revolutionized how users interact with the web. What was once an intractable jumble of data with no semblance of organization has become a treasure trove of useful information due to the magic of search. Armed with the power of Map and Set , you can recreate this phenomenal achievement yourself. Once completed, you will understand the core technology underpinning Spotlight, Google, and Bing, and have solid practice in the use of the Map and Set ADTs.

Want to see the power of search right now? Click 🔍 Search in the top-right of the page navigation bar and search for easter egg to see what lurks deep in the recesses of the course website…

In your search engine, each web page has a URL ("Uniform Resource Locator") that serves as its unique id and a string containing the body text of the page. You will first write functions that pre-process the body text and populate the data structure. Next you'll implement the function to search for pages matching a search query. Finally, you will write a console program that allows the user to enter many search queries and retrieve the matching web pages. Put all together, you will have built your own mini search engine!

Understanding the web page data

We have harvested the body text from the pages of our course website into a database file that is provided in the starter project. The format of the database file is as follows:

  • The first line of a pair is a page URL.
  • The second line of a pair is the body text of that page, with all newlines removed (the entire text of the page in a single string).
  • The first two lines in the file form the first pair. The third and fourth lines form another pair, the fifth and sixth another, and so on, with alternating lines of page URL and page content.

To view an example database, open the file tiny . txt or website . txt in the folder Other files / res of the starter project.

Using an inverted index for searching

To make our search efficient, we need to be thoughtful about how we structure and store the data. A poor choice in data structures would make search painfully slow, but clever use of our wonderful ADTs can avoid that fate. A search engine typically uses a nifty arrangement known as an inverted index .

An inverted index is akin to the typical index in the back of a book. If you look up the keyword "internet" in the index of the CS106B textbook , it lists two page numbers, 18 and 821. The word internet occurs on page number 18 and again on page number 821. Thus, an inverted index is a mapping from word to locations. You look up a keyword in an inverted index to find all the locations where that keyword occurs.

In contrast a forward index operates in the other direction. For our book example, the forward index would be a mapping from a location (page number) to all the words that occur on that page. To build an inverted index, you typically start with the data in the form of a forward index and then process to convert to the inverted form. Inverting the index takes time up front, but once complete, the inverted index supports extremely fast operations to find query matches.

On to the code!

Decomposition is one of your best tools for tackling a complex problem. We'll guide you along by breaking the problem down into a sequence of steps. Follow our steps to success!

All of the functions and tests for the search engine are to be implemented in the file search . cpp .

1) Write helper function cleanToken ()

Start by writing a helper function for this small but key string-processing task:

cleanToken takes in a string token and returns a "cleaned" version of the token, ready to be stored in the index. To clean a token, extract only the letter and number characters and convert all letters to lowercase, i.e. "Wow!" becomes "wow", "mid-quarter" becomes "midquarter", and "CS106B" becomes "cs106b". Standardizing on this simple canonical form allows search queries to operate case-insensitively and ignore punctuation.

You might want to start by reworking the code from the lettersOnly function you wrote for Soundex and change/extend as necessary. The return value from cleanToken is the cleaned lowercase version, or will be empty string if the token is to be discarded (i.e. contains no letter or number characters).

Write test cases to confirm that cleanToken works correctly in all situations before moving on! You will make heavy use of cleanToken when building the inverted index and if this helper mishandles tokens, it will throw off your results and lead to sad times. It is definitely worth your time to confirm with a solid set of test cases before moving on. Remember to label your tests as STUDENT_TEST .

2) Write helper function gatherTokens ()

The helper function gatherTokens extracts the set of unique tokens from the body text.

The argument to gatherTokens is a string containing the body text from a single web page. The function returns a Set of the unique cleaned tokens that appear in the body text.

The function first tokenizes the body text — this means to separate the string into words using the space character as delimiter. Call the stringSplit function from the Stanford library for this task. Then call your cleanToken helper function on each token and store the cleaned tokens into a Set. No matter how many repeat occurrences of a given word are in the body text, repeatedly adding it to a set stores just the one copy, which makes this ADT ideal for gathering the unique tokens.

Time to test! Add test cases that confirm the output from gatherTokens , so you will later be able to call on this function with confidence that it does its job correctly.

3) Create inverted index in buildIndex ()

The function buildIndex reads the content from the database file and processes it into the form of an inverted index.

The first argument to buildIndex is the name of the database file of the web page data, the second argument is the Map to be populated with data for the inverted index. The return value of buildIndex is the number of documents processed from the database file.

Before starting to code, work through a small example on paper to ensure you understand the data structure you are trying to build. Open the res / tiny . txt database file and manually process the content to build the inverted index.

Q7 . List the contents of the inverted index built from the res / tiny . txt database file.

When you are ready to start writing code, read the previous section Understanding the web page data to review the format of the database file. Look at the code we provided for readMazeFile in maze . cpp for an example of C++ code to open a file and read the contents into a Vector of lines. Feel free to reuse that code for buildIndex .

For each page, you will call gatherTokens to extract the set of unique tokens. For each token in the page, you record the match to the page's URL by adding to its entry in the inverted index. The index is of type Map < string , Set < string >> , this map associates each keyword with the set of the URLs where that word occurs. The function returns the count of web pages that were processed.

Our starter code contains some provided tests to get you started; add student tests of your own to ensure your coverage is comprehensive. Use a TIME_OPERATION test to confirm your function operates in reasonable time. Building the inverted index should generally not take more than 5 seconds.

4) Search using findQueryMatches ()

Next up is to implement the function:

The query string can either be a single search term or a compound sequence of multiple terms. A search term is a single word, and a sequence of search terms is multiple consecutive terms, each of which (besides the first one) may or may not be preceded by a modifier like + or - (see below for details). The same stringSplit function used to divide the body text into tokens will be used to divide the query sentence into search terms.

The matches to a query are found by following these rules:

  • If the query is a single search term, the matches are the web pages containing that term.
  • Hint: use Set operation unionWith
  • A search term has a slightly altered meaning when the term is prefaced by certain modifiers:
  • Hint: use the Set operation intersect
  • Hint: use the Set operation difference
  • The same token cleaning applied to the body text is also applied to query terms. Call your helper cleanToken to process each search term to strip punctuation and convert to lowercase before performing the search for matches.

Note that searching is case-insensitive , that is, a search for "binky" returns the same results as "Binky" or "BINKY". Be sure to consider what implications this has for how you create and search the index.

Here are some example queries and how they are interpreted

  • matches all pages containing the term "quokka"
  • means simple OR cheap
  • matches pages that contain either "simple" or "cheap" or both
  • means tasty AND healthy
  • matches pages that contain both "tasty" and "healthy"
  • means tasty WITHOUT mushrooms
  • matches pages that contain "tasty" but do not contain "mushrooms"
  • means tasty WITHOUT mushrooms OR simple AND cheap
  • matches pages that match ((("tasty" without "mushrooms") or "simple") and "cheap")

There is no precedence for the operators, the query is simply processed from left to right . The matches for the first term are combined with matches for second, then combined with matches for third term and so on. In the last query shown above, the matches for tasty are first filtered to remove all pages containing mushrooms , then joined with all matches for simple and lastly intersected with all matches for cheap .

You may assume that the query sentence is well-formed, which means:

  • The query sentence is non-empty and contains at least one search term
  • A modifier will not appear on its own as a search term
  • A + or - character within a search term that is not the first character is not considered a modifier
  • The first search term in the query sentence will never have a modifier
  • You can assume that no search term will clean to the empty string (i.e. has at least one letter)

There is a lot of functionality to test in query processing, be sure you add an appropriate range of student tests to be sure you're catching all the cases.

5) Put it all together with searchEngine ()

Thus far, your amazing code has re-arranged a mass of unstructured text data into a highly-organized inverted index with instantaneous retrieval and fancy query-matching capability. Now take it over the finish line to build your own search engine!

The final function to implement is:

This function implements a console program that works as follows:

  • It first constructs an inverted index from the contents of the database file.
  • It prints how many web pages were processed to build the index and how many distinct words were found across all pages.
  • It enters a loop that prompts the user to enter a query
  • For each query entered by the user, it find the matching pages and prints the URLs.
  • When the user enters the empty string ( "" ), this indicates they are done and the program finishes.

After you have completed this function, your program should behave as shown in the transcript shown below.

Example program run (executed by running searchEngine ( "res/website.txt" ) in main . cpp ):

Way to go, 👍 you're well on your way to becoming the next internet search pioneer!

  • The res folder of the starter project includes two database files: tiny . txt is the small example used in the writeup and website . txt is the body text extracted from all of the pages in our course website (as of Jan 21). You can open these files in Qt Creator to view their contents. The project resource files are listed under Other files -> res . Your program can open a resource file by specifying the path as "res/myfilename" .
  • Inverted Index on GeeksForGeeks
  • Wikipedia article on Inverted Indexes
  • Stanford Natural Processing Group on Tokenization

If you have completed the basic assignment requirements and and want to go further, we encourage you to try adding an extension! A non-exhaustive list of potential extensions is listed below:

  • When you get the results from a Google search, they are ranked so that the more relevant results are first on the list. The current Google algorithm is a well-kept trade secret (though it was originally the Page Rank algorithm, named for its creator, then-Stanford graduate student Larry Page), but a simple approach is to give higher rank to pages with more occurrences of the search term. For this extension, you would need to re-think how you create your index to include the number of matches.
  • The assignment does not allow a search for multi-word terms, such as section leader . Searching for phrases is not trivial, as you cannot simply keep a mapping of all possible phrases in the document. You could, however, keep track of where in each document a word is, and then use that information to determine if words in a phrase are next to each other in any particular document.
  • The English language has many, many words that show up in text but are not particularly important for content, such as the , and , if , a , etc. These words are called Stop Words , and it would make your index smaller if you removed such stop words from the index. Here is more info about stop words .
  • In the current design, if a user searches for section they won't find matches for sections , even though pages that mention either might be a relevant match. Stemming is the process of reducing words to their base form, so that (for example) both section and sections would become, simply, section in the index.

If you have other creative ideas for extensions, run them by the course staff, and we'd be happy to give you guidance!

U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government Here’s how you know keyboard_arrow_down

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Jump to main content

United States Patent and Trademark Office - An Agency of the Department of Commerce

In response to public feedback regarding the retirement of the legacy search systems, a new simplified interface of Patent Public Search named Basic Search is now available. Basic Search is recommended for users new to Patent Public Search, or for users who only need to perform a quick look up.

PatFT, AppFT, PubEAST and PubWEST were retired on September 30. Preexisting links to U.S. patents and pre-grant publications are no longer available. You will need to create new links for saved documents. Read through this  step-by-step guide  on how to set up a web link to access a saved document, as well as set up saved search queries. For questions regarding Patent Public Search, please contact the Public Search Facility at  [email protected] .

Search for patents

New to Patent Searching? See this important information about searching for patents:

How to Conduct a Preliminary U.S. Patent Search: A Step by Step Strategy  - Web Based Tutorial (38 minutes)

The Seven Step Strategy  - Outlines a suggested procedure for patent searching

  • A detailed handout of the Seven Step Strategy with examples and screen shots.

Patents may be searched using the following resources:

Patent Public Search

The Patent Public Search tool is a new web-based patent search application that will replace internal legacy search tools PubEast and PubWest and external legacy search tools PatFT and AppFT. Patent Public Search has two user selectable modern interfaces that provide enhanced access to prior art. The new, powerful, and flexible capabilities of the application will improve the overall patent searching process.

Global Dossier

Global Dossier is a set of business services aimed at modernizing the global patent system and delivering benefits to all stakeholders through a single portal/user interface .  Through this secure service, users have access to the file histories of related applications from participating IP Offices, which currently include the IP5 Offices.

By using this service, users can see the patent family for a specific application, containing all related applications filed at participating IP Offices, along with the dossier, classification, and citation data for these applications. This service also provides Office Action Indicators to help users identify applications that contain office actions, a Collections View for saving documents and applications for review later on in the session, and the ability to download the documents in an application.

Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR)

The Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system provides IP customers a safe, simple, and secure way to retrieve and download information regarding patent application status.

Public Search Facility

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Public Search Facility located in Alexandria, VA provides the public access to patent and trademark information in a variety of formats including on-line, microfilm, and print. Trained staff are available to assist public users.

Patent and Trademark Resource Centers (PTRCs)

Your nearest Patent and Trademark Resource Center (PTRC) maintains local search resources and may offer training in patent search techniques.

  • Find your nearest PTRC
  • 7 Steps to Searching at a PTRC

Patent Official Gazette

The Electronic Official Gazette allows users to browse through the issued patents for the current week. The Official Gazette can be browsed by classification or type of patent, for example, utility, design, and plant.

Common Citation Document (CCD)

The Common Citation Document (CCD) application aims to provide single point access to up-to-date citation data relating to the patent applications of the IP5 Offices. It consolidates the prior art cited by all participating offices for the family members of a patent application, thus enabling the search results for the same invention produced by several offices to be visualized on a single page. The creation of the CCD application is part of an ongoing process of technical harmonization at international level aimed at establishing an appropriate infrastructure to facilitate greater integration of the global patent system.

Search International Patent Offices

To see if your idea has been patented abroad, you'll want to refer to searchable databases made available from other International Intellectual Property offices. Free online access to patent collections is provided by many countries. Some available databases include:

  • European Patent Office (EPO) provides esp@cenet a network of Europe's patent databases- This site also provides access to machine translation of European patents for some languages. 
  • Japan Patent Office (JPO) - This site also provides access to machine translations of Japanese patents.
  • World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) provides PATENTSCOPE ® Search Service, which features a full-text search of published international patent applications and machine translations for some documents as well as a list of international patent databases.
  • Korean Intellectual Property Rights Information Service (KIPRIS)
  • China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) - This site also provides access to machine translation of Chinese patents.
  • Other International Intellectual Property Offices that provide searchable patent databases include: Australia , Canada , Denmark , Finland , France , Germany , Great Britain , India , Israel , Netherlands , Norway , Sweden , Switzerland and Taiwan .

Stopfakes.Gov provides informative Toolkits that give an overview of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) environment in various countries around the world.

For additional search resources, contact your local Patent and Trademark Resource Center , visit the USPTO Public Search Facility or the USPTO Main STIC Library . The staff in the Main STIC Library are experts on foreign patents and able to help the public as needed.

Search Published Sequences

The Publication Site for Issued and Published Sequences (PSIPS) website provides Sequence Listings, tables, and other mega items for granted US patents or published US patent applications.

All sequences (SEQ ID NOs.) and tables for listed patents or publications are available for viewing, without downloading, by accessing the proper document detail page and then submitting a SEQ ID NO or a mega table ID number.

Patent Assignment Search

Visit the Patent Assignment Search website to search for patent assignments and changes in ownership.

Patent Examination Data System (PEDS)

The Patent Examination Data System (PEDS) in the Amazon Cloud provides public users the ability to search, view and download bibliographic data for all publicly available Patent applications in a secure manner. The solution allows public users to search and download bibliographic data in bulk as well as manage the volume of data that can be downloaded at any given period of time by a particular user.

Additional information about this page

IMAGES

  1. BEST SEARCH ENGINE FOR COMPLETING ASSIGNMENT OR PROJECT || GOOGLE SCHOLAR (HINDI)

    assignment search engine

  2. What is a Search engine? How does work?

    assignment search engine

  3. How Do Search Engines Work? Beginner's Guide

    assignment search engine

  4. Top 10 Search Engines To Make Your Career: Searching For Information In

    assignment search engine

  5. 10 Useful Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Learning Resources

    assignment search engine

  6. How Search Works?

    assignment search engine

VIDEO

  1. search engine specific for reddit

  2. Planning your Research

  3. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION... if you aren't using it you are missing out!

  4. 𝐒𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲

  5. Students

  6. NIOS SOLVED TMA FREE OF COST. Entrepreneurship (249) 10th class.#niossolvedassignment #niostma2024

COMMENTS

  1. SweetSearch

    SweetSearch is a Search Engine for Students. Since 2009, SweetSearch has been the best place for students - and anyone else - to begin their research. It leverages Google to search only a fully vetted "whitelist" of websites. The original index was created by 50+ librarians, educators and researchers who collectively invested over 100,000 hours in finding the best resources

  2. 5 best search engines for students in 2022 besides Google

    Ecosia 's unique philosophy lands it on our best search engines list: it's a social business founded on the principle that everyone can combat climate change, even with a click. Ecosia channels the ad revenue it makes to support reforestation projects that aim to neutralise carbon dioxide emissions. According to the website, it has planted ...

  3. The best academic search engines [Update 2024]

    Get 30 days free. 1. Google Scholar. Google Scholar is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only lets you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free but also often provides links to full-text PDF files.

  4. Q. Where can I find a good website to use for my assignment?

    2. Don't get stuck on Google (or any other single search engine). Here are the librarians' favorite web search spots: Use library's subject pages. Each pages includes a "websites" section, and each link was chosen by a librarian, so you can feel confident that they're trustworthy. (Note that you may need to click a website, then search within ...

  5. Go Beyond Google: The Best Alternative Search Engines

    Bing is the most full-featured contender in this group, with new AI Bing Chat search and content generation, strong news, image, video, and map searching capabilities. Bing is known for superior ...

  6. Top 9 Education Search Engines for Students

    List of Best 9 Education Search Engines. 1. Google Scholar. Google Scholar is a free, customized academic search engine designed specifically for students, tutors, researchers and anyone interested in academic materials. It's the most popular research search engine for students and it lists academic resources across a wide range of sources.

  7. Top Educational Search Engines for Students

    5. Bielefeld Academic Search Engine. Operated by the Bielefeld University Library, the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) draws from over 7,000 sources to provide users access to over 150 million documents. Paid subscriptions provide the greatest value, but open access users can still look to the academic search engine for journals ...

  8. 10 Educational Search Engines for Students (For research)

    The top 10 educational search engines include Google Scholar, Google Books, Microsoft Academic, Science.gov, PubMed Central, Researchgate, and others. Each search engine has its own index and database of academic resources and searches through them. Utilizing the internet effectively for college students involves discerning credible sources ...

  9. Get Started with Assignments

    Easily distribute, analyze, and grade student work with Assignments for your LMS. Assignments is an application for your learning management system (LMS). It helps educators save time grading and guides students to turn in their best work with originality reports — all through the collaborative power of Google Workspace for Education.

  10. Assignment: Search the Internet

    Assignment: Search the Internet. For this assignment, you will search using the Google search engine and take a screenshot of your search results screen. Follow the directions and then submit your assignment. If you find a step that trips you up, review the module or ask for help from your classmates in the discussion forum. ...

  11. How to Find Sources

    Research databases. You can search for scholarly sources online using databases and search engines like Google Scholar. These provide a range of search functions that can help you to find the most relevant sources. If you are searching for a specific article or book, include the title or the author's name. Alternatively, if you're just ...

  12. How to Find Trustworthy Sources for School Assignments

    Research the website: Look up the company that owns the website and see how well-known and trusted it is for the information you're citing. You'll want to use sites that are: Well-known and well-respected. Credible. Check media coverage: Look for a Media or Press page on the website.

  13. RefSeek

    RefSeek - Academic Search Engine. Web. Documents. Type 2 or more characters for results. Learn about: Neptune, Pandemics. Browse the Reference Site Directory. Academic search engine for students and researchers. Locates relevant academic search results from web pages, books, encyclopedias, and journals.

  14. 28 Best Academic Search Engines That make your research easier

    15 Best Academic Journal Discovery Platforms. 15 Best Academic Research Trend Prediction Platforms. 15 Best Websites To Download Research Papers For Free. #20. Jurn. Powered by Google Custom Search Engine (CSE), Jurn is a free online search engine for accessing and downloading free full-text scholarly papers.

  15. About Assignments

    About Assignments. Assignments is an add-on application for learning management systems (LMSs) that helps you distribute, analyze, and grade student work with Google Workspace for Education. Assignments makes Google Docs and Google Drive compatible with your LMS for file submissions. You can use Assignments to save time distributing and grading ...

  16. Searching with a Search Engine

    Learn how the search engine works. Read the instructions and FAQs located on the search engine to learn how that particular site works. Each search engine is slightly different, and a few minutes learning how to use the site properly will save you large amounts of time and prevent useless searching. Each search engine has different advantages.

  17. 23 Great Search Engines You Can Use Instead Of Google

    Mainstream search engines are the Google alternatives that have managed to maintain a modest market share over the past several years. 6. Yahoo.com. Screenshot from Yahoo.com. As of December 2023 ...

  18. Finding material for your assignment: Search strategies and Databases

    You can use the search operators AND, OR and NOT to combine search terms.These are the most commonly known and used operators. The operators AND and NOT limit the number of results from a search. The operator OR does the opposite; it increases the number of results.. Examples: Endangered AND birds : combines these two words; Endangered OR birds : searches for the words endangered OR birds.

  19. What Is a Search Engine? Definition Plus 10 Examples

    10 Examples of Search Engines. To better understand the mechanics and practical use of search engines, let's take a look at some of the most commonly-used ones. 1. Google. Google is the biggest search engine in the world by far. It handles over 5 billion searches each day and has a market share of over 90% at the time of writing (August 2019).

  20. CS106B Search Engine

    For this part of the assignment, you will recreate this phenomenal technological development by using the Map and Set ADTs to build a document search engine that can find matching pages for a user's query with lighting-fast response time. This is a simplified version of the technology underpinning Spotlight, Google, Bing, and every other modern ...

  21. CS106B Search Engine

    A search engine typically uses a nifty arrangement known as an inverted index. An inverted index is akin to the typical index in the back of a book. If you look up the keyword "internet" in the index of the CS106B textbook, it lists two page numbers, 18 and 821. The word internet occurs on page number 18 and again on page number 821.

  22. Search for patents

    Patent Public Search. The Patent Public Search tool is a new web-based patent search application that will replace internal legacy search tools PubEast and PubWest and external legacy search tools PatFT and AppFT. Patent Public Search has two user selectable modern interfaces that provide enhanced access to prior art. The new, powerful, and flexible capabilities of the application will improve ...

  23. Search Engines

    The results of the search engines are known as the search engine results pages or SERPs. Search engines are known to mine information on the web and deliver all these to the internet users based on the queries made. It all started with the project managed by Tim Berners-Lee. Also an important project that defined the now popular internet ...