Ready Reference: Search Engines

Google: Popular and dominant by a huge margin (1 Trillion indexed Web pages currently), Google sprouts new features and "experiments" almost daily.
Google (Advanced Search): You can combine or exclude search terms or phrases and limit by language, date, domain, or format.
Yahoo!: With the largest index after Google, Yahoo should be checked too because competing search engine indexes do not completely overlap.
Bing (Microsoft): Bing may owe its rank as the 3rd most used search engine to the world dominance of its owner's software. (Google's index is still far larger.)
alltheweb: allthe web is actually Yahoo, but you may prefer its spartan interface - quite a contrast to Yahoo's own. Also provides a useful method of limiting by date.
Ask.com: Results are ranked by subject popularity, which is not ideal for serious research. Original for its "natural language" search option (now common), Ask.com struggles for distinction..

MetaSearch Engines -- Search Several Engines at Once

Everything on the Web can not yet be found by Google. In fact, all the search engine indexes combined, cover only about 6% of all the Web pages out there. Moreover, these indexes do not completely overlap, so you may find more by searching several. "Meta-Search" engines (more accurately, "multi-engines," like those listed below, let to use several search engines at once. Although complex searching is not available with these engines, they provide a good starting place.

Clusty: Clusty "clusters" results by subject subdivisions. Good for topical and current event searching.
Dogpile: (InfoSpace) Aggregates results from the 4 largest search engines. Identifies source of each hit but does not reveal the total number of hits. Dogpile may have the worst name, but may also be the least gimmicky.
Ixquick: Brings "top 10" from each search engine, aggregates results, and eliminates duplicates. Its video search engine is very fast. A major claim: Ixquick protects your privacy by deleting the "tracks" you leave behind when searching. Most search engines (Ixquick claims) gather and sometimes sell this information and / or don't secure it from identity thieves.
Kartoo: Search results are displayed in a cute "cloud." You may find this unique organizing technique helpful for "visualizing" information, or just annoying. (Flash is required.)

Subject-Specific Focused Search Engines

Google Scholar: Beta test version. Finds scholarly sources including articles. If the full text is not available, the article may be available to Oneonta students and faculty either in print, in library databases (such as Academic Search Premier) or through Interlibrary Loan.
Google Uncle Sam: Searches U.S. Government sites. (Nno ads!)
Science.gov: A selection of science sites from federal agencies.
Scirus: Searches over 200 million science-related web pages, as well as peer-reviewed journals
Citeseer: Full-text scholarly scientific articles. You can trace the works the author has cited AND what works have cited that article. Serious Science.
Google Books (Advanced Search): Includes full text for many out-of-copyright books (generally 1923 or earlier).
Google Custom Search (CSE): Google allows you to "design" your own search engine, automating the search of websites you regularly use.

Internet Directories -- Browse the Web by Subject

Humans select, sometimes evaluate, and organize (by subject) the listings in a directory. Use a directory to browse and to find the "best" sites on a general or popular topic.

General Directories

Open Directory Project: Large, briefly annotated directory. Google Directory is based on the Open Directory Project.
Librarians' Index to the Internet: Small, but carefully selected, high quality sites with excellent annotations.
Yahoo!: Large, not well annotated, and a little hard to find. One of the first, it's useful for popular and commercial topics, but entries, sadly, can be dated or enemic.

Academic Directories

Academic Info: Selective, annotated "college and research level Internet resources."
Infomine: "Scholarly Internet Resource Collections" is the subtitle. Often refered to, "quirky" may be the best description of this directory maintained by the University of California, Riverside. It may or may not work for you (figuratively or literally).
Intute: It claims to be a "...free online service providing you with a database of hand selected Web resources for education and research." You can limit your search to Arts & Humanities, Health & Life Sciences, Science, Engineering & Technology, the Social Sciences, or any combination. Based in the UK.
VoS - Voice of the Shuttle: "A structured and briefly annotated guide to online resources" focusing on the humanities.

Sources of Informal Information (that may lead to "hard info")

Omgil: Searches through discussion lists dedicated to almost any topic that's being "discussed" on the Web
Boardtracker: Tracks discussions in online "bulletin boards."
Boardreader: The same, but will also search video, images, and Twitter
Google Blogsearch: Google again, to answer: is someone blogging on the topic of your research?
Search.wikia.com: Because wikis are now where a lot of data gathers.

Tutorials on How to Search the Web

Recommended Search Strategy: Step-by-step searching strategy from UC Berkeley Library.
Searchenginez: Web Search Tutorial: Handy tips for web searching, along with links to popular subject search engines.

The Search Engine Business

If you want to know about search engines and the search engine industry, few objective, non-commercial web sites are also current.

Search Engine Showdown: Maintained for years by Greg Notess, it fails to keep current. But he is writing search engine news for Online Magazine. Find abstracts to his past columns at http://www.infotoday.com/online/ OR the whole text by searching in Academic Search Premier, using "Notess" in the author field (It's a drop-down menu) and "Online" in the Journal Name field.