Invisible Web, as the name suggests is the invisible part of the World Wide Web which either is not indexed on the search engine or is subjected to various access restrictions.
The regular search engines cannot trace or track the content uploaded on the Invisible web which means not everyone can get access to it. Just in case you aren’t aware, the World Wide Web can be called the metaphor Ocean which further has different sections like Surface Web, Shallow Web, Deep Web, and Dark Web.
Surface Web includes the normal part of the Web which we browse and it includes the set of websites indexed by the automated search engines. It is available for everyone. All the social networking websites, online shopping, etc comes under Surface Web. Search engines can index and track all the content uploaded on the Surface Web.
Shallow Web is basically used by the developers and other IT people which includes the databases stored by the developers, servers, programming language, etc.
Dark Web and Deep Web – These two are slightly different and combinedly make the term Invisible Web. The Deep Web includes personal content like online banking, email inboxes, cloud storage, etc which requires some kind of authorization to access. All the information and content stored or uploaded on the Dark and Deep Web are hidden and are not accessible to everyone.
Whereas the Dark Web actually refers to a set of anonymously hosted websites that are not indexed by the regular search engines.
List of Invisible Web Search Engines
1] The WWW Virtual Library
The creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners Lee started the WWW Virtual Library is the oldest web catalog. It is actually a wide range catalog which compiles the key links of many web pages in various categories such as Agriculture, Education, Arts, Recreation, etc. This virtual library lives on hundreds of various servers worldwide.
2] USA.Gov
If you are looking for any information on US government services and programs you can check the USA.Gov. It comes with a user-friendly interface. The website is very simple. Just use the search box to find what you are exactly looking for. It is very well organized as per the categories.
3] Elephind
This website is one of its kind as it showcases international historical newspapers. It includes 3,866,107 Newspapers and 4,345 Newspaper titles which is huge. You will get the newspapers from the 17th Century too. You can either use the search bar to get a specific newspaper or can go through the newspaper archives. Most of the newspapers shown on this website are on the deep web and are not indexed on Google or other traditional search engines.
4] Voice of the Shuttle
Voice of the Shuttle is an excellent resource for anyone interested in Humanities which has been perfectly and beautifully curated collection of deep web content. The collection includes a wide range of categories from Architecture to General Humanities, Literature to Legal studies, and many more. It has been listed in Forbes as the best of the Web directory in the Academic research category.
5] Ahmia
It is a Dark web search engine and you are required to install the Tor web browser to use it and it is can not open the links without the Tor browser. Ahima fully indexes the hidden content published on Tor.
These were the five search engines to search the Invisible Web.