Specialized Search Tools These search tools focus on a specific topic or region.  Their information is often much more detailed than generic search tools.

The well-known search tools (e.g. Yahoo, google) are generic. There are many specialized databases that concentrate on a specific topic. In this section, I highlight some of these databases to illustrate how these databases can contain a wealth of a data that cannot be reached by search engines such as google.

You are invited to try some of these specialized resources. When you get the results from one of these sites, think if you would have been able to get the same information from google

• Maps for Driving:  maps.yahoo.com.  - You can drag the route to explore options.  maps.google.com - try the street view option.
• Want to stop at Mcdonalds along the way?  Go to this page and select McDonalds Trip Planner.
• Phone book:  Anywho to look up all your neighbors (based on street) or to do a reverse look-up. Un-listed people might still be online through local real estate tax records (e.g. Fairfax County )
• Library of Congress - Full text searching of current and past legislation.
• Government Printing Office - The GPO provides GPO Access for advanced search capabilities of the Federal Register and other key resources.
• internet movie database - Very extensive!
• Collegenet - College Search Engine
• Live Local -   "birds eye" images of your house! 
• zillow.com - shows house prices embedded within satellite imagery   Realtor.com - Online access to over 300 MLS's Nationwide. Domania - shows the actual sales price on your entire street during the past 10 years.
• Live tracking of airline flights or  large ships,
• Sex offenders registry - State of Virginia, list of other state registries.
• Unclaimed property - links to each state to search for unclaimed bank acounts, utility deposits, etc.
• ZabaSearch - PIPL, =  people search engines
• Knowx - An extensive source of public records - this is a fee-based service.
• Your Local Public library  may provide you online access to many PAY sites using your library ID card. (example: Loudoun County, Virginia)
• archive.org - try the wayback machine to see how websites used to look since 1996.

• Kompass.com - info on 1.8 million companies (requires registration).
• Thomas Global Register - a data base of manufacturers. (requires registration).
• The Ultimate trade Show Resource - A data base of thousands of trade shows and conference events. Eventseye also looks good.
• my.yahoo.com - design your own customized page of industry news and track individual companies.
• SEC's EDGAR Database for US traded companies.

Continue exploring with this list of country-specific resources.