Web contents are interlinked at each other through hyperlinks. Inter-linking nature of web explores significant sources of information. In the context of exploring hyper-linking behaviour of the web and retrieving relevant information, search engines and web crawlers play a predominant role as data sources but search engines had mostly withdrawn their supports after December 2011. An attempt has been taken to evaluate search engines (Google, AoL, Bing, Yahoo!) using some criteria and found that AoL has the highest coverage among these search engines. The paper also identifies various alternative data sources to carry out webometric research. The finding of the study shows that majestic.com is a predominant and comprehensive data source among alternative data sources in webometric research.

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