8 Top Alternative Search Engines
May 6th, 2008 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean 13 Comments
After reading Mike’s post on alternative search engine Addict-o-matic, I tried it out and liked the interface quite a bit. It’s a good way to get a blast of different kinds of search results on one scannable page. I’m adding it to my list of favorite alternative search engines to use. I’ve been adding and dropping search engines to this list for years, and in this post I’ll cover some good ways to break out of the Google lock-down and expand your search horizons.
Redzee stands out for its highly glitzy, and useful interface. Your search results come back as thumbnails of the sites the results are on. You can hover your mouse cursor over results, click and drag, and the thumbnails will cycle in a circle, similar to how you can cycle through album art on an iPod.
Most web workers are very familiar with how to search blogs exclusively, but Omgili is a great alternative search engine for searching web forums. The posts people put up there are often like blog posts, and you can get strong doses of personal experiences in the posts.
Dogpile is a good way to search across many search engines at once. I often use this to search for images, because you get a huge number of unexpected results back.
If you, like me, often search for video, try Truveo. It lets you conduct your own searches, but you can also choose categories such as Most Watched This Week. You may also find what you need at Blinkx.
Microsoft’s QnA search is a good way to get at specialized knowledge that people have. Your search inputs lead to “answers.”
ZabaSearch has become one of the most popular ways to search for people, and public information about them. I often find results here that don’t show up in other people search engines.
If you want to experiment with a whole slew of alternative search engines, try Altsearchengines.com. If you click on the “Verticals” tab there, you’ll find a huge collection of search engines focused on specific industries.
Do you know of any good alternative search engines?
13 Comments Post your own comment
Alex says: May 6th, 2008 4:59pm
Sam,
It’s still early days and in private Beta, but check out http://www.Whozat.com, The People Search Engine. A few stories about it at http://blog.abinventio.com/category/whozat/ . Let me know what you think.
Cheers,
Alex
Charles Knight says: May 6th, 2008 5:19pm
Yes, about 1,400 of them!
;-) Thanks for the mention.
Here’s a few of my personal favorites:
1-800-2ChaCha (any question for any reason at any time on any phone - that has text)
KartOO and http://www.kvisu.com/
KoolTorch.com and SpaceTime.com for ebay
piclens.com or the new TinEye.com
Love that RedZee!
Charles Knight, editor
AltSearchEngines.com
Check out TheSearchRace.com
Jason says: May 7th, 2008 5:31am
More on RedZee. I’d recommend staying away:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/investigating-the-redzee-search-engine
cubus says: May 7th, 2008 7:52am
Another people searchengine: http://www.123people.com
Cece Salomon-Lee says: May 7th, 2008 11:07am
I’m not sure if this fits. My company has a service called Insight24 (http://Insight24.com) that was previously covered as part of the Coffee Break (http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/11/29/wwd-coffee-break-19/). It’s a directory of B2B rich media content such as webcasts/webinars, podcasts and videos.
Alexis says: May 7th, 2008 11:23am
It takes a bit of getting used to, but I get an awful lot of pleasure searching on GoodSearch. I love the fact that something mundane that I do literally hundreds of times a day raises money for the free health care clinic down the street.
iLibrarian » 8 Top Alternative Search Engines says: May 7th, 2008 1:08pm
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David says: May 7th, 2008 4:26pm
If you’re looking for a different way to view results, try “http://www.webbrain.com/”. This is a Java applet that has a unique presentation of categories and results, although the search results might not be as comprehensive as Google. There’s also a personal version available from: “http://www.thebrain.com/#-47″.
Luka says: May 7th, 2008 7:50pm
I love Dogpile.com. I’ve used it for years!
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links for 2008-05-09 at Ip’s. says: May 9th, 2008 2:44pm
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Ken says: May 11th, 2008 10:28am
Don’t forget http://pipl.com That site found things that no other website was able to find. Great site to find people.
Research Processes « The world as viewed by Nicosilva says: May 11th, 2008 12:25pm
[...] also has a list of 8 Alternative Search Engines. They include reviews of the different search engines as well, so you know those are good quality. [...]