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ARTICLE DATE: 04.18.07
By Kyle Monson
As of this writing, Google doesn't own the whole world. But it does have a
solid lock on our browsing habits. Want proof? Try typing "good" into
the address bar of your browser—did you accidentally type "goog"? Yeah,
me too. When a coworker heard I was writing this story, he asked
(semi-jokingly) "but if I'm using a different search engine, how will I
get Google results back?"
Depending on who you ask, Google accounts for between
40 and
50-something
percent of the search engine market (add in Yahoo and MSN and the
figure jumps to around 90 percent). And rightly so—the service gives
speedy results and has a very good user interface.
But don't you ever want to try a different search engine, just to see
where it takes you? After all, Google's search results are based on
relevance and popularity, so scrolling through Google results isn't the
best way to get off the beaten path and discover new Web territory.
Here, for your surfing pleasure, are 11 ways to do exactly that.
Included in our list are sites like
ChaCha.com,
where a real live "Guide" takes your query and returns related results
tailor-made to your specifications. The service is free, and is quirky
enough to be a lot of fun (a friend of mine learned first-hand that if
you flirt with your guide, sometimes they'll flirt back, though of
course that's against ChaCha policy). The service doesn't require any
registration, and it's completely free.
StumbleUpon
gives you thumbs-up/thumbs-down icons in your toolbar and lets you rate
pages and sites you come across. As StumbleUpon learns your
preferences, it gets better at directing you to stuff you'll like.
There's also a social aspect; you can add other people with similar
interests to your friends list, and their preferences will further
refine your search results. StumbleUpon's Web site can be slow at
times, but it's a great way to find Web content you wouldn't be exposed
to otherwise.
1. ChaCha -
Can’t find what you’re looking for? ChaCha.com lets you talk to a real live
professional “Guide” who takes your query and returns related results tailor-made
to your specifications. The service is free, and is quirky enough to be a lot of
fun (a friend of mine learned first-hand that if you flirt with your guide,
sometimes they’ll flirt back, though of course that’s against ChaCha policy).
The service doesn’t require any registration, and it’s completely free.
2. Clusty -
The unfortunately named Clusty.com takes a different approach to search results.
Whereas Google arranges your results in a simple list, Clusty first aggregates
the results from several search engines (Google not included), then arranges them
in clusters to help you further refine your search. For instance, a search for
“Dell XPS” returns clusters like various XPS model numbers, reviews, and shopping
links with prices.
3. Ask.com -
Ask.com isn’t a member of the Search Engine Triumvirate (Google, Yahoo and MSN),
but it’s incredibly feature-rich and uses “subject-specific popularity.” Instead
of ordering results simply by popularity, it orders them by “popularity among pages
considered to be experts on the topic of your search.” We conducted some sample
searches and the results were ordered quite a bit differently than corresponding
Google searches. And we love the page-preview feature and the editorially selected
“Smart Answers” that appear within your search results. Read our full review for
more on Ask.com.
4. Kosmix -
Kosmix.com is a topical search engine that is still very much a beta service. It
conducts searches by category, and includes six for searching: Health, Video Games,
Finance, Travel, US Politics, and Auto. On timely issues, Kosmix results are pretty
terrible. The US Politics channel had nothing on Mitt Romney's recent campaign finance
success—a big story right now—and the most recent results when searching on "Imus"
are from 2005. Interestingly, the paid search results are much more timely and relevant,
which is a shame, because Kosmix includes the cool ability to sort results by political
persuasion. Many of the results were outdated, though, so it was tricky to test the
filter's effectiveness on search terms other than broad issues like "campaign financing"
or "global warming." For non-timely issues and search terms, like health topics, Kosmix
faired much better. It included lots of information on prevention, treatment, and risk
factors, along with the standard list of search results.
(Full disclosure: Kosmix recently struck a deal with PCMag.com's parent company,
Ziff Davis Media, to provide search services for Ziff Davis' Game Group.)
5. StumbleUpon -
StumbleUpon gives you thumbs-up/thumbs-down icons in your toolbar and lets you rate
pages and sites you come across. As StumbleUpon learns your preferences, it gets better
at directing you to stuff you'll like. There's also a social aspect; you can add other
people with similar interests to your friends list, and their preferences will further
refine your search results. StumbleUpon's Web site can be slow at times, but it's a great
way to find Web content you wouldn't be exposed to otherwise.
6. Technorati -
If you're not including blogs in your Web searches, you're missing out on a ton of great
content that is often too timely to be listed near the top of typical search results
(which skew toward popularity instead of timeliness). Google has a blog search tool, but
we're talking about Google alternatives here, and the best one we've seen is Technorati.
The blog search service includes plenty of ways to search for the hottest blog content,
including a Top Searches list, a list of the most-linked-to blogs, and the music, movies,
videos, and games that the most bloggers are linking to. Searching is easy, and you can
sort your search results by timeliness (for the newest content) or authority (blogs with
more inbound links have more authority).
7. Draze -
Draze MetaSearch lets you collect search results quickly from the Big Three search engines:
Google, MSN and Yahoo. The homepage is a typical Google-looking page, with a search bar.
Once you enter your search term, you get the best results back from all the different
search engines. You can also choose to view the results from just one of the search engines,
or exclude the results from one. The results page includes a "Peek-a-Boo" feature that gives
you full, scrollable page previews, so you don't have to click through to see that a page
isn't helpful.
8. Ms. Dewey -
Ms. Dewey is more of a sexy, playful search engine than a useful one. If you felt weird
reading that, I felt even weirder typing it. Ms. Dewey is a personable (read: flirty)
interface for Windows Live Search, which uses an actress's canned video responses and phrases
to interact with users. The search engine was quite slow, though, and results are displayed
in a relatively small window that is cumbersome to scroll through. We can only assume that
the main draw of this search method is Ms. Dewey herself.
9. Search With Kevin -
If Ms. Dewey doesn't do it for you, why not search the Web with the help of divorced former
backup dancer Kevin Federline? The Search With Kevin search engine is a promotional site
built by Prodege where users can win great prizes like an autographed K-Fed CD. Beat that,
Google! It's a bizarre little search tool, and includes Web, Image, and News searches, with
a shopping search on the way. I'd like to say I resisted the urge to do an image search for
Britney Spears but, well, I didn't.
10. Rollyo -
Rollyo.com, short for "Roll Your Own Search Engine," lets users do just that. You can do
general searches or category searches (like searching for "iPhone" in the Tech category) to
get results from blogs and the Web at large, or create your own search engine (or "Searchroll")
to only search specific sites. For instance, I created a Searchroll that only searches my
favorite music blogs, so I can hunt for band info from just those specific blogs. You can also
view other users' Searchrolls, including celebrity search rolls. There aren't many instances in
which I'd want to limit the number of sites I'm searching, but if that's your thing, Rollyo
definitely makes it easy. The site is still in beta but worked pretty well for me.
Read PC Magazine's full review
for more info.
11. netTrekker -
netTrekker's a good one for the kiddies. The search engine is aimed at schools and students,
and every site that is included in a list of search results has been hand-picked by a staff of
educators to ensure safe surfing. A search for "stars," for instance, will include lots of info
about constellations and zero about Paris Hilton. The only problem: it ain't free. The service
costs a cool $4.95 a month. Check with your kids, though, as they may have a school login, which
they can use at home.
12. AfterVote -
This search site aggregates results for the Big Three (Google, Yahoo!, and MSN) and adds a social
element by letting users "vote" results up or down. It's also ridiculously full-featured. Search
results include Alexa and PageRank stats, bugmenot login info, Digg and del.icio.us buttons, and
even Wayback Machine archived pages.
13. Can't Find On Google -
Less search engine than message board. Can't Find On Google lets people post search queries that
came up empty-handed on Google and wait for another user to help out. Unfortunately, while there
are plenty of queries posted, the response-to-post ratio isn't all that high. If you're really
desperate to discover that certain something that Google just can't find, it's worth a shot.
Check out this alphabetical list of search engines.
- A9 - Amazon's A9 search engine
- Altavista -AltaVista is now using new owner Yahoo!'s database. But it is still worth using.
- Amazon - Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more
- Answers.com - Online Dictionary, Encyclopedia and much more.
- AfterVote - The social search engine.
- Ask.com - Better tools get you better results.
- Babel Fish - Translate a block of text or a web page.
- BBC News - Search for the latest news from the BBC.
- Business.com - Find information to help manage and grow your business.
- Can't Find On Google - Because the things Google can't find is more interesting than the stuff Google can find.
- ChaCha - Simple access, better answers.
- Clusty - The clustering search engine.
- Creative Commons - Free tools for authors to easily mark their work with the freedoms they want it to carry.
- del.icio.us - Social bookmarking; Search through most bookmarked sites.
- Dogpile - Dogpile, is a metasearch engine which, puts the power of all the leading search engines together in one search box to deliver the best combined results. The process is more efficient and yields more relevant results.
- Draze - Compare Google, Yahoo and MSN with ONE search.
- eBay - New & used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods & more at low prices.
- ESPN - Get the latest sports news, scores, and highlights.
- Expedia - Search for hotels by destination with Expedia's Best Price Guarantee.
- Flickr - Search for photos on Flickr.
- Google - The mother of all search engines.
- Hollywood - Search for movies and movie listings.
- IMDB - The Internet Movie Database.
- Kosmix - Everything you need to know about a topic summarized from thousands of web sites into relevant categories.
- Live.com - Live.com search engine.
- Lonely Planet - Search through Lonely Planet's travel guides.
- LinkedIn - Search your LinkedIn network for the people you need when you are on any Web site
- Merriam-Webster - Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical and more.
- Ms. Dewey -
- MSN - The third largest search engine.
- netTrekker -
- Rollyo -
- Search With Kevin -
- StumbleUpon -
- Technorati - A real-time search engine that keeps track of what is going on in the blogosphere
- USA Today - Find the latest news from across the USA and around the world.
- Weather Channel - Enter city, state or zip code to find your weather information.
- Wikpedia - The incredible free encyclopedia.
- Yahoo! - The second largest search engine.
- Yahoo! Answers - Search real answers to real questions from real people.
- Yahooligans - Search engine for kids and teens.
We've put a few popular search sites in the Search Bar in the upper-right corner of Firefox. If you'd like to add more, there are hundreds to choose from. Click on a Search Engine to add it to your
Firefox Search Bar:
- A9 - Amazon's A9 search engine
- Ask.com - Better tools get you better results.
- BBC News - Search for the latest news from the BBC.
- Business.com - Find information to help manage and grow your business.
- del.icio.us - Social bookmarking; Search through most bookmarked sites.
- ESPN - Get the latest sports news, scores, and highlights.
- Expedia - Search for hotels by destination with Expedia's Best Price Guarantee.
- Flickr - Search for photos on Flickr.
- Hollywood - Search for movies and movie listings
- IMDB - The Internet Movie Database.
- LinkedIn - Search your LinkedIn network for the people you need when you are on any Web site.
- Live.com - Live.com search engine.
- Lonely Planet - Search through Lonely Planet's travel guides.
- MarketWatch - Stock quote look-up and financial information.
- Merriam-Webster - English dictionary search.
- Technorati - A real-time search engine that keeps track of what is going on in the blogosphere
- USA Today - Find the latest news from across the USA and around the world.
- Weather Channel - Enter city, state or zip code to find your weather information.
- Wikipedia - The incredible free encyclopedia.
- Yahoo! Answers - Search real answers to real questions from real people.
- Yahooligans - Search engine for kids and teens.
The Big Three account for 90 percent of searches on the internet.
- Google
- Yahoo!
- MSN
Additional Resources
- Browse through more search engines at mycroft.mozdev.org
- Learn how to make your own at the Mozilla Developer Center.
- Search Enging Showdown
Special thanks to the Mycroft Project for their work on Firefox Search Engines.
Copyright (c) 2007 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Primary Search Engines
Secondary Web Search Engines
These are either smaller or not the primary search engine for access to databases from the Providers of Search listed below.
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Dead Search Engines
These search engines used to offer their own database or
unique search features. They have all abandoned their position in search,
although they still may have some kind of search functionality. The linked
reviews reflect how these search engines used to work.
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