It may come as a surprise to know that there are search engines out there other than Google, and it will probably shock you even more to know that some people actually prefer the alternative search engines. Google has become so well known that most of us use it numerous times in a day without
considering whether there is any better software to help us in our search, and probably most of us are very happy with the way Google performs – I can’t really see ‘Bing it’ or ‘Yahoo it’ catching on as phrases in the same way that ‘Google it’ has!
The problem with Google’s dominance is that other search engines often get passed over, even though some of them would be a lot more helpful to you in your searches. This post should serve to inform you of the other options which are available in the hope that you can perform more targeted and useful searches in the future.
First let’s look at a category of smaller search engines, each one designed to look for and present results in a very specific way. If you are looking for something specialised you are likely to find that these would produce better and more relevant results than Google could.
- FactBites searches encyclopaedias and information based websites to provide you with factual information; bringing up the most relevant sites rather than the most popular which is what Google does. FactBites will return only factual information from educational, encyclopaedic and other relevant sites.
- Quintura doesn’t just list results in order of relevance but also provides a tag cloud which allows you to retrieve similar but alternative results by hovering over a tag with your mouse. Like Google it allows you to search the web, images or video and it also has its own site for kids with content filter and safe browsing.
- Yippy (formerly known as Clusty) presents search results in an organised way, clustered into categories to make your results easier to see and use. Perform a search and you will see the results below as you would expect to in Google. The difference is that down the left side of the screen it will categorise the results under different titles, enabling you to easily and quickly refine your search and find exactly what you want.
- Dog Pile runs multiple searches and merges the results into one quality set of information. Usually every different search engine will give you different results for a single search, but Dog Pile saves you the hassle of searching through them all by finding the best, most relevant results. Type in your search term and Dog Pile will return the best answer from each search engine, allowing you to harness the power of multiple search engines at once.
- Exalead gives you the results you would expect in the centre of the page but also has a toolbar on the right hand side of the screen allowing you to customise and refine your search further. You can specify the file, site and multimedia type and the language you search in. You can also choose which country you want to view results from, with a pie chart showing the proportion of results from each country. Along the side is a list of related terms and there are related search options along the top, both of which you can click on to refine or redirect your search.
If none of these take your fancy you might want to try a more mainstream search engine. These will do exactly the same a Google but may present your search results in a way that is more helpful to you, or may give you different options to help refine or widen your searches.
- Bing has a toolbar allowing you to search in several categories: images, videos, shopping, news or visual search. Visual search is the most different from what Google provides, bringing up galleries of pictures grouped into categories. Going into the category and clicking an image will bring up information and news headlines associated with that image, as well as a list of related searches. Running a search displays results
exactly as you’d expect from Google with a similar bar down the left of the screen offering you various search options. Bing’s extra toolbar offers related searches, search history and narrow by region; 3 search refining options as compared to the six offered by Google. Bing does show you several beautiful pictures on its homepage with interesting bits of information about each picture – probably not a defining reason for choosing a search engine but nice nonetheless.
- Yahoo Search starts out looking exactly the same as Google, with options to search in web, images, local, video, shopping, news and more. The local search option is something Google and Bing don’t provide, it acts in a similar way to Yell.com by pinpointing your location and giving you a list of popularly searched services in the area. A web search brings up the usual results and gives you the options to search the web or UK only or Ireland only. You can also refine your search to news, photos, Wikipedia or Twitter and there is the usual toolbar on the left of the screen, with Yahoo it just gives you a list of related searches. Underneath the search box is a drop-down arrow which lists similar searches to your original one which you can select to widen or redefine your search.
- Ask Jeeves is traditionally a question and answer site, but it does perform the role of a search engine as well. It allows you to search web, images and videos just like the other mainstream search engines, but then it also has a local option like Yahoo and a Q&A option which brings up FAQs related to the topic you searched. On the right of the screen it offers a related searches section entitled ‘Might Jeeves Suggest’ and also gives you an advanced search option which allows you to select the country, language and domain of your search. The advanced search
also allows you to define your search better and search for ‘all of the words’, ‘the exact phrase’, ‘at least one of the words’ or ‘none of the words’. You can also select whether you want to search the whole web page, in the page title or in the URL.
Why not give some of these Google alternatives a try, you might find that after a day of using one of them you never go back to Google again.
For more details or if you have any questions contact us at sales AT flint-it DOT com or call 0845 3309680.
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