Search Party

Does the Web need yet more search engines? Entrepreneurs behind two recently birthed engines think so, because their tools are different from those like Google (www.google.com) and AltaVista (www.altavista.com). EliteSeek (www.eliteseek.com) is a meta search tool, meaning it queries traditional engines on other sites-in EliteSeek's case, from sites like Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) to AllTheWeb (www.alltheweb.com). But unlike other meta search tools (such as Dogpile, www.dogpile.com), EliteSeek gathers the top results from all the engines it queries on a single page, rather than displaying results engine-by-engine. That should speed up finding what you want.

Clickey (www.clickey.com), by contrast, aims to be lean and fast. It limits its results to only the top-level domains which, put in plain English, means only one URL per company. That policy dramatically slices the numbers of sites your searches will find, and trial-and-error will tell you if the abbreviated results still deliver what you want. When it does, results will definitely come up much faster than you're used to.

Robert McGarvey has covered the Web since 1995. Visit his Web site at www.mcgarvey.net.