Many search engines provide specialized types of Internet search functionality, focusing on certain types of data. The following sites provide lists of specialized search engines:
Some popular types of specialized search sites are summarized below:
- FTP sites. The following sites provide FTP access to binary files, such as .gif, .exe., and .zip:
- Deep web. The following index provides information about access to online databases and other information not easily accessible by normal search engines:
- Domain search. The following site lets you search the Domain Name System system for domain names by keyword:
- Legal. The following site provides access to legal information:
- Medical. The following sites provides access to medical research:
- Meta-search. Meta-search engines allow you to submit a search query to several engines at once, and then return the results in a single listing. The advantage of meta-search engines is that they perform multiple searches for only one query entry. The disadvantage is that you can’t use all of the features that you can on specific search engines. Most meta search engines will preserve boolean searches using AND, OR, and NOT, and some will preserve phrasesin quotes. The following sites index meta-search engines:
- Multimedia search engines. The following sites provide search capabilities for finding images and other non-text data: