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Can't find the information you need?  Frustrated when you try to find it with your favorite search engine?

Well, whether the information relates to smoking and health, or any other topic, the answer just might be a search engine which specializes in the area or topic of concern to you.  Here's some more information.

Immediately below are excerpts from a recent article in the New York Times which describes how important specialty search engines are becoming.  Following that article are two lists.

The first provides you with links to a number of Internet sites which include links to a vast number of specialty search engines.  The second provides a short list of some of  those specialty search engines.

So, if you can't find what you want on ASH's award-winning web site -- and don't forget to use the search engine -- why not check out the links below and find one or more specialty search engines which work best for you. 

Two weeks ago, online newspapers and magazines were buzzing with news about Linda Chavez, President Bush's first choice for labor secretary.

But from the results coming up in most popular search engines, you would never have known it. Instead of retrieving articles about an illegal immigrant who had lived in Ms. Chavez's home, a Google search on "chavez" led to several encyclopedia entries on Cesar Chavez, the American labor leader and advocate of farmworkers' rights.

"I don't see anything that anyone would feel is relevant to her given the context of this past week," said Danny Sullivan, the editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, as he typed "chavez" into other search engines.

[To get more information about breaking news on any topic, check out ASH's own "Links to news sources and important information" at:  Newslinks From Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) ]

His demonstration illustrated a problem that has long been apparent longtime problem that has to anyone casting about for online news reports: search engines can be pitifully inadequate, partly because they rely on Web_page indexes that were compiled weeks before. It is not just timely material that seems to escape their reach. Pages deep within Web sites are also often missed, as are multimedia files, bibliographies, the bits of information in databases and pages that come in P.D.F., Adobe's portable document format.

In fact, traditional search engines have access to only a fraction of 1 percent of what exists on the Web. As many as 500 billion pieces of content are hidden from the view of those search engines, according to BrightPlanet.com, a search company that has tried to tally them. To many search experts, this is the "invisible Web." BrightPlanet prefers the term "deep Web," an online frontier that it estimates may be 500 times larger than the surface Web that search engines try to cover. And that uncharted territory does not include Web pages that are behind firewalls or part of intranets.

To dig deeper into the Web, a new breed of search engine has cropped up that takes a different approach to Web page retrieval. Instead of broadly scanning the Web by indexing pages from any links they can find, these search engines are devoted to drilling further into specialty areas __ medical sites, legal documents, even Web pages dedicated to jokes and parody. Looking for timely financial data? Try FinancialFind.com. Seeking sketches of molecular structures or even scientific humor? Biolinks.com may help.

Some search engines go even further, sending out finely tuned software agents, or bots, that learn not only which pages to search, but also what information to grab from those pages. Either way, the theory is the same: The smaller the haystack, the better chance of finding the needle.

Lately, however, a few specialty search engines have been popping up on lists of most_visited Web sites __ evidence that people are learning to find them. MySimon, a service that specializes in culling product prices and information across 2,500 shopping sites, is one of the most popular.
 

SELECTED WEB SITES WHICH LIST SPECIALIZED SEARCH ENGINES     Guides To Specialized Search Engines (with Descriptions)  The InvisibleWeb  Search Engines databases and Newswires @ Internets  MedNets an international medical resource  WebData.com®  ZDNet: Search IQ: Directory of Search Engines and Specialty Search Directories  Search Engines databases and Newswires @ Internets  fossick.com - The Web Search Alliance Directory  direct search - Web Search Tools and Directories (featuring Invisible Web Resources)  fossick.com - The Web Search Alliance Directory  direct search - Web Search Tools and Directories (featuring Invisible Web Resources)  Beaucoup! 2,000+ Search Engines, Indices and Directories  MetaIQ.com is an all in one meta search engine, search engines directory and all round information website.

SOME OF THE MORE USEFUL SPECIALITY SEARCH ENGINES COMPARISON SHOPPING: www.mysimon.com -- Searches for information and compares prices at more than 2,000 online shops. NEWS STORIES: www.moreoever.com -- Finds headlines from more than 1,800 news sites. LEGAL DOCUMENTS:   FindLaw -- Combs through a legal dictionary, legal news and the text of the United States Constitution. A search engine powered by Alta Vista enables users to search for documents on federal and state Web sites. FINANCIAL INFORMATION: www.financialfind.com -- Plumbs sites about financial planning and investing, including those that offer tax information. SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: www.biolinks.com -- Hunts for information from the Web pages of scientific journals, associations and databases. ACADEMIC MATERIALS: www.academicinfo.net -- Finds Web-based material suitable for a professor's lesson plans or a student's research paper. Geared to college students and academic researchers, although many materials may be helpful to high school students. LOCAL BUSINESSES: ww.northernlight.com/geosearch.html -- Finds Web pages for businesses based near your home or up to 100 miles away. GOVERNMENTAL INFORMATION: www.google.com/unclesam -- Searches for government documents from federal and state Web sites. ADOBE PDF FILES: Search Adobe PDF Online   -- Searches for documents that are published in Adobe's portable document format. ONLINE IMAGES: www.ditto.com -- Searches for photographs and other images that have been posted online. FUNNY STUFF: www.humorsearch.com -- Finds Web pages with jokes, humor columns and parodies of famous sites.