Genie Tyburski, in the April 9 issue of her TVC Alert, cited to a report on Wired News that concluded that, for searching scientific information, the search engine Scirus is better than Google. Genie summarized the article as follows:
“The article illustrates how special search services such as Scirus serve scientists better than Google. Scirus, owned by science publisher Elsevier, is powered by Fast ESP.”
An article I found with a Google search listed the author's favorite search engines. Here's what he said about Scirus:
“At times I need scientific research material and one of the best sites to get scientific information is Scirus. Scirus (http://www.scirus.com) is the most comprehensive science-specific search engine on the Internet. Driven by the latest search engine technology, Scirus searches over 167 million science-specific Web pages, enabling you to quickly [help find] the latest reports, peer-reviewed articles and journals that other search engines miss. . . . Scirus has proved so successful at locating science-specific results on the Web that the Search Engine Watch Awards voted Scirus ‘Best Specialty Search Engine’ in 2001 and 2002.”
A review on TechTv's site summarized the advantages of using Scirus over most search engines:
The reviewer adds: “Scirus reads non-text files. This helps you locate scientific papers appearing in PDF and PostScript files, which often don't show up in conventional Web searches.” Moreover, he lists “a lot of great [Scirus] functions that you won't find in most standard search engines.”“Scirus.com is unique because it searches only websites with scientific content. It currently covers more than 120 million science-related pages, including access-controlled sites. Journal sources covering life, physical, social, and health sciences University websites.”
Another posting, this one in a thread, was less enthusiastic. However, even the author of that posting also reported that, under certain circumstances, Scirus was better than Google.
Scirus describes itself as “for scientific information only.” In It's About Us, Scirus gives details about the service.
Incidentally, if you are interested in Internet resources and don't already subscribe to Genie's TVC Alerts, you're missing valuable information. She describes her TVC Alert as “a free weekday news bulletin [that] reports on industry events and Web-based resources for library and legal professionals.” You can find instructions on how to subscribe on her web site.