The Right Tools

Search Tools 

EXALEAD

Never heard of this. But I do not know of very many out there to be honest.
With this search engine you can search the web, images, videos, Wikipedia and more.
This engine has a few large logo-ed links at the bottom of the page that you can click, such as the labs one which I found interesting. When you search for something very little ads come up which I like. When searching a phrase such as hats or visors all things that contain one or both of these words come up. It also has a related searches area, I cannot seem to find any advanced search area though. Over all I liked this one, I think it might be just as useful as google in the beginning stages of research.

Metasearch Tools

Dogpile

I have never heard of this one either. This one has little tabs on the search engine with the following choices to search within; web, images, video, news, local, and white pages. This search engine has an advanced search as well as a preferences link. It appears that this search engine gets its results from google, yahoo and yandex. This search engine has an area at the left that suggests things that you may be looking for. In preferences you can change what kind of results you are looking for, more like a filtration system though then a more specific search. In the advanced search it has good ways to split up what you are looking for, this could be a good search engine to use when you are trying to find the bulk or middle section of your research.

Subject Directories

The WWW Virtual Library

Again I picked this one because I had never heard of it before. When you first arrive at this search site you are given lists of topics that you can choose from. After selecting the topic you want it brings you to some more choices for what it is that you want to know more about. Specific choices, once you have clicked one of those then it brings up a description of that thing. A history and origin, shows when it was last updated. and some related articles within the site that might also be helpful. I think this type of search would only be helpful if you were looking for something very particular.