Government Search Engines

USA.gov
http://usa.gov

Formerly known as FirstGov.gov, this site is the official portal of the U.S. government. Offering users access to all 20,000 government sites (with over 27 million Webpages) from a single central point. The site is designed with novice or beginning users very much in mind. Instead of being organized by government agencies or departments, sites are categorized principally by “interesting topics,” such as Business and Economy, Healthy People, and Arts and Culture, among others. Clicking on a topic brings up a page with several featured links and numerous related links to various federal Websites. Users who are searching for specific information will probably have more success using the keyword search engine. Those looking for a specific department or agency’s site can also browse hierarchical listings of the three branches of government accessed from the US Government section on the left-hand side of their window. While a central portal for all US government sites is certainly welcome, one can’t help but wonder if the site aims too low by emphasizing the “interesting topics” over a more straightforward organization of sites. Power users will probably be disappointed in the layout and the search engine, which falls short of the leading commercial government or even general search engines. Many will still use the site, however, if only for the quick and easy access to the various official sites listed for the three branches of government.
[Annotation from Scout Report Signpost. ]

Google Uncle Sam
http://www.google.com/unclesam

Google is a search engine that makes heavy use of link popularity as a primary way to rank web sites. This can be especially helpful in finding good sites in response to general searches such as "cars" and "travel" because users across the web have in essence voted for good sites by linking to them. Hits are sorted with sub pages of the same address bulked together. Searches .gov and .mil sites. When a site is inaccessible, a cache feature pulls up a backup version.

Govspot.com
http://www.govspot.com

Portal to government information and resources

Gov't Info Xchange
http://www.info.gov/

Searches resources of government agencies.

SearchGov.com
http://www.searchgov.com/

Searches .gov sites. Like Google, offers caching feature.

Students.gov
http://www.students.gov

A government-wide web portal created for college studetns to locate any kind of feeral service or information they need.