Google: This is one of the best!

Northern Light: This is another great search engine!

All The Web: This is a British search engine that is very similar to Google.

Dogpile: This site is okay, for a "metasearch" engine, but it's nothing to google at.

There is a huge difference in the results you will get from different one search engine to the next. Each search engine is set up by it's creators to search the web in different ways. Most sites, because they are funded by commercial revenues, will list the commercial sites it finds first and the informational sites and educationally-based sites second. If you are conducting searches for educational research material on the WWW, it is best to use a search engine set up to prioritize its searches accordingly. Two of the best for educational purposes are Northern Light.com and Google.com. For example, if you compare the results of a search on a commercially-prioritized search engine like Yahoo for "Easter Island," to a search cunducted on Google for "Easter Island," Yahoo's search results will give you a handful of sites (under 35), but Google's search will garner you over 20,000 sites. Most of the other highly commercialized search engines are not much better than Yahoo.

If we look into a commercial site like Alta Vista, we find that it gives you a lot of references, but it does not give you an easy way to categorize those sites like Northern Light offers with its customized folders. Northern Light also has a "Special Collection" of over two million complete articles. Also, Alta Vista does not have the "Advanced Search" options that Goole has, and it is not as academically oriented as Google.
Dogpile is a metasearch engine that uses eighteen search engines including Google.

Metasearch engines can be useful, but at times, they will provide you with an overwhelming number of sites. Some metasearch engines like Ceoexpress search a lot of other search engines, but they force you to limit the number of citations from each search engine, so you get a limited, arbitrary selection of references.

Be sure to check the "advanced search" option and the "filter" option on any search engine. A few search engines like Google have filters for choosing the type of web sites that you want; for example, you can choose between .gov, .edu, and .org sites in Google.

The search engine www.alltheweb.com is based in the UK and is similar to Google in its presentation, academic orientation, and Advanced Search options. Furthermore, both Google and alltheweb have access to over 1 Billion web pages.

Avoid these Search Engines for college research:

http://www.dejanews.com/ Deja

http://www.ceoexpress.com/ Ceo Express

http://www.altavista.digital.com/ AltaVista

http://www.hotbot.com/ Hotbot

Yahoo: This is probably the worst search engine to use for college research. I won't give them the space for a link.

In conclusion, for college level research, your best choices for search engines are Northern Light, Google, and All The Web.