digg

Join DiggAbout

Discover and share the best of the web!
Learn more about Digg by taking the tour.

The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines

readwriteweb.com — We all know and use Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask. But here's a list of 100 more that add their own unique slants to organizing the Web for you. You might find one or a few that improve your search life.

Bury
show profanity settings
expand all
  • chweber99, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Great summary of all search engines
    • ricebergers, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4poo it's missing some of my favorite search engines of old..
      dogpile, teoma, hotbot, and altavista.
    • bobcrotch, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Actually I was sad to see dogpile, hotbot and altavista go but google is so much better than all of them anyhow and thats a fact.
    • DupeAHolic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines (That Don't Work As Well As Google)
    • gamebittk, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Missing Askx.com -- It's only in beta, and not supposed to be available, but can be accessed at askx.com - It's web 2.0, and has a search sidebar with categories and suggestions. [Google better adopt quick]!

      Also, snap.com is a great web 2.0 engine.

      http://askx.com
      http://snap.com
    • Battlecry, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I've been using http://astalavista.box.sk for years and years. Shame it's not on the list.

      Strange. Looks like digg screwed up my link. Oh well. You'll figure it out.
    • gn0stik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Uhh, altavista, dogpile, hotbot, are all still there. so no need to feel sad to see them "go".
    • Battlecry, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Oh.. pry NSFW.
    • affanjam, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3http://www.ninja.com
      Deadly Accurate.
    • billyh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Google is better than dogpile" Huh? Dogpile includes Google et. al.
  • koregaonpark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17How is digg swarm a search engine?
  • bamapachyderm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Some of them are OK, but a lot of them are really specialized "search engines." Like...digg. Or del.icio.us. Or Last.fm. Search engines???
    Still, the list could be useful to someone, I guess. Ms. Dewey's on there, which is kinda funny.
  • drewolanoff, on 06/10/2008, -2/+1awesome list.
  • ameba, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1no snap or alltheweb, no digg.
  • NewChar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Eh, I'll stick with Google.
    • dracostimpy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5If you like the Google, you'll love the Scroogle! "Google results without the cookies or search record":

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogle
    • cbergeron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Not me. Google has been letting me down for about a year now. It seems like each time they "tweak" their algorithm, I can't find things as easily as I could. Items that used to provide hundreds of pages, now only provide like 6 - none of which are useful (I used "how to build a steam engine" as my example).

      It seems like Google is leading toward companies, and against DIYers and researchers. Just my opinion...

    • MrKite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Google is limited to what websites it knows about. You'd be surprised at some of the results from other engines. I've found amazing websites that never come up after a google search. You're definitely missing out if all you use is google.
  • SLSSNAKE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah, I'm willing to try these out... but just for the sake of experimentation. I rarely ever have trouble finding what I want with Google.
  • hidd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3wheres Ninja
  • Wonderkind, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7www.yoople.com is a hotel search in German. That may indeed be a "search engine", but top 100?
    • robdavy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yeh, the definition for "search engine" is very vague in this list
  • Relentl3ss, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3What happened to altavista on that list... Got to say that the image search is far better than googles, purely for the fact that you can select the required resolution of the wanted results - handy for getting new wallpapers etc.
  • commandobob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Odd, thought that SearchMash would show up for sure...
  • alekgv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1anyone else notice that wasn't a "top 100" but just a list of search engines (some of which aren't search engines)?
  • nolol, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0I use winzy.. you sign up and you get points for every search you make
    a point is an entry into a daily/weekly/monthly sweepstakes for stuff like amazon gc, ipod, wii, etc.

    http://www.winzy.com/thursday
  • andyukguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4ChaCha + guide is definitely the most interesting of the lot - I have no idea how they think they can scale that!

    www.chacha.com (for those too lazy to read the article)
    • tresk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1ChaCha is great, I love picking on the guides. But unfortunately so does other Diggers.
      Now I get a:
      "Search With Guide is disabled because you have been involved in a possible abusive action. Our abuse alert is set at a low threshold to protect our visitors and guides."
  • LonesomeFighter, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1they forgot Tom Green's search engine at TomGreen.com. But that ok, cuz during his show he always accidentally says to Google something then tries to correct people to use his search engine.
  • trubbleshute, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The reason why I like Google is because it is an "inert white screen". My windows 'theme' is the 'classic' one. My desktop has just a few icons on it. I launch anything I need to through the run box. I prefer speed over a pretty gui. To each his own, but I'll stick with Google.
  • SigmaEcho, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0***** you I don't Use Micro$oft Live Search! They owe google royalties for that *****.
  • Seph7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1A lot of these arn't really proper web search engines their just search engines within sites very misleading title buried
  • nightpootle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0www.vdoogle.com - even though it is made with google still better at finding videos than google due to its tweaks
  • webhitman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I love how some commenters are trying to promote their crappy ass sites in these comments. I don't care
    • commandobob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well, what do you expect them to do? You don't just say "I don't think this covers the top 100" and not back it up with something.
  • guyinthechair, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No blingo.com? Man, that search engine is great. Gives you moolah and prizes for doing google searches!
  • skymt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1FTA: "We all intuitively know that the World Wide Web is just that, a three dimensional (or "3-D") web of interconnected Web pages."

    Wrong. The WWW has many more than 3 dimensions. See Jakob Nielsen's take: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/981115.html

    Not that it really matters, since the article (bizarrely enough) made that reference to the dimensions of the Web to introduce a couple search engines that use a 2D display.
  • brandn487, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0where's booble
  • subarusqueege, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1dogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpiledogpile
  • phisquare, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Does thottbot.com count? =P That's gotta be right up there with google...
  • EnglishmanInAu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This article is useless without pron engines.

    And Google image search sucks :p
  • funkytaco, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1http://hakia.com/ is in our data center. It looks like they were missed.
  • flag8, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1www.blingo.com

    It's based on Google, but you get prizes for searching (I just got a movie ticket this month)
  • truspark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1it's really sad that no one has come along to top Google by now because they are getting quite lazy. I long for the days that one found a better search engine every 3 months. Whatever happened to those "deep web" searches that people have been promising for the last 5 years?
    • billyh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I stopped using Google and Yahoo! when they were complicit in blocking Chinese users from accessing data the government didn't want them to see. Nothing lower to deprive people of their unalienable rights in the pursuit of the tainted dollar. Then again I'm old enough to remember the days when the Internet had no advertising... And by god we were going to keep it that way. (He said through a cloud of tears)
  • billyh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hey, does anyone know where that bitchin cluster-oriented Flash search site out of France is? I've been trying to find it after seeing it a year ago. It's unbelievably cool with clusters of data returns in piles. As you select the areas of data you wish to paruse, you descend down hallways of data.
  • gleb32, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Google. There is no other.
  • Nazuel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Hey, does anyone know where that bitchin cluster-oriented Flash search site out of France is?"

    Kartoo? www.kartoo.com
  • ozdiggs, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Great article - it's a shame most people would not understand it. Like all things on the net it is not an article for dummies.

    Sorry Mate. I really enjoyed every bit of the article and I recommend it to anyone who is into learning more about search engines and what they really do.

    Incidentally, the company with the biggest budget and advertising power will always be known most - but unfortunately this does not mean that company is the best in the trade. Google has the capital to do a lot of things - I use google not because I like it but because it is convenient for me - because they have the grunt in search engine response, they beat hands down most competitors. However, more than 50% of the returned search results are useless - ie. 50% of the entries in the listing is useless. In most occasion I come across their sister companies likes Amazon (can't stand amazon appearing on every page).
    I've done away with amazon simply putting "-amazon" in the search criteria.

    These days search engines (from google and the likes) return search results from most accessed web pages in the databases. In 80% of the my searches the results are useless that is why I set the browser settings to return 100 results per page enabling me to quickly go through the page until i find the relevant sites that show the most correct search criteria. In the end I have to work out which site is more relevant to the search criteria and which ones are not. Now, I consider myself a power searcher who can hone in what to search for using the Boolean logic attributes, but that's me speaking as a person with and IT background and one who is well versed in this field. What about the rest of the community who comprise the other 95% or more of the population? How do they sift through the garbage that gets thrown in their faces?

    Simply put - You can't Live with them but you also can't live without them.
    Don't leave home without a Search Engine. They are just maps.

    Oz Dogan





  • syberghost, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Jebus. blogspam, of a blog article full of spammer sites pretending to be search engines.

    AND it's a dupe story.

    Forget bury; this story needs a "terminate with extreme prejudice".
  • rpt1700, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1These top x lists of y are so so tired...
  • moopinator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"LastFM is on their list. I use LastFM but not as a search engine? I thought it was online radio.
  • mazzleyu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i would like to tell you.
    i use Xooda - http://www.xooda.com
    it covers 16 countries and searches the top engines arround you.
  •  

    Login or register to add a comment

    Create a new account or login to join in the conversation on Digg. You'll also be able to Digg stories to help promote things you like.


© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain.
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.