AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com/
AltaVista is consistently one of the largest search engines on the web, in terms of pages indexed. Its comprehensive coverage and wide range of power searching commands makes it a particular favorite among researchers. It also offers a number of features designed to appeal to basic users, such as "Ask AltaVista" results, which come from Ask (see below), and directory listings from LookSmart.

Ask
http://www.ask.com/
Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves) is a human-powered search service that aims to direct you to the exact page that answers your question. If it fails to find a match within its own database, then it will provide matching web pages from various search engines.

Excite
http://www.excite.com/
Excite is one of the most popular search services on the web. It offers a medium-sized index and integrates non-web material such as company information and sports scores into its results, when appropriate.

FAST Search
http://www.alltheweb.com/
Formerly called All The Web, FAST Search aims to index the entire web. It was the first search engine to break the 200 million web page index milestone. It offers portal features such as personalization and free e-mail, plus the search capabilities of the former Infoseek search service, which has now been folded into Go. Searchers will find that Go consistently provides quality results in response to many general and broad searches, thanks to its ESP search algorithm. It also has an impressive human-compiled directory of web sites.

Google
http://www.google.com/
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.

HotBot
http://www.hotbot.com/
Like AltaVista, HotBot is another favorite among researchers due to its large index of the web and many power searching features.

Live Search
http://www.live.com/
Live Search is Microsoft's web search engine and replaces MSN search and Windows Live Search.  Live Search has the ability to view additional search results on the same web page (instead of needing to click through to subsequent search result pages) and the ability to dynamically adjust the amount of information displayed for each search-result.

Lycos
http://www.lycos.com/
Lycos started out as a search engine, depending on listings that came from spidering the web. In April 1999, it shifted to a directory model similar to Yahoo. Its main listings come from the Open Directory project, and then secondary results come from spidering the web. Lycos also feature another directory of web sites called Lycos Community Guides.

RealNames http://www.realnames.com/
The RealNames system is meant to be an easier-to-use alternative to the current web site addressing system. Those with RealNames-enabled browsers can enter a word like "Nike" to reach the Nike web site. To date, RealNames has had its biggest success through search engine partnerships. In particular, it is strongly featured in results at AltaVista and Go (Infoseek).

WebCrawler 
http://www.webcrawler.com/ WebCrawler has the smallest index of any major search engine on the web -- think of it as Excite Lite. The small index means WebCrawler is not the place to go when seeking obscure or unusual material. However, some people may feel that by having indexed fewer pages, WebCrawler provides less overwhelming results in response to general searches.

Yahoo
http://www.yahoo.com/
Yahoo is the web's most popular search service and has a well-deserved reputation for helping people find information easily. The secret to Yahoo's success is human beings. It is the largest human-compiled guide to the web, employing about 150 editors in an effort to categorize the web. Yahoo has over 1 million sites listed. Yahoo also supplements its results with those from Inktomi. If a search fails to find a match within Yahoo's own listings, then matches from Inktomi are displayed. Inktomi matches also appear after all Yahoo matches have first been shown.

SOURCE: http://www.searchenginewatch.com h