By Guest Author Nitin Karandikar

There are hundreds of alternate search engines – my friend Charles Knight keeps a running list of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, see: June Top 100 on this blog (updated monthly) – but some are clearly gaining traction faster than others. In this post, we take a look at some of these successful alternate search engines: What are the secrets of their success? What makes them stand out from the crowd?

To begin with, what does it mean for a search engine to be successful? Since different sites have different goals, we will take a look at engines that stand out in some way: either in terms of large amounts of traffic, or a large mindshare within a given domain, or in generating buzz. In the same vein as the Top 100 list, this is a subjective look at a few successful sites. Not all of these are, strictly speaking, search engines – but perhaps that’s part of the secret – search is more effective when it’s part of a bigger picture!

So without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the unique strategies used by successful alt-search-engines.

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I am a big fan of the networking program LinkedIn . Lijit is sort of a LinkedIn search site. Here’s an example: One search for “dentist Boulder Colorado” could return bookmarks to four dentists that your friends use, the web site of an oral surgeon that you father knows from school, and articles from online journals that that particular oral surgeon read last week! Maybe you better just try it out!

knuru , has created a new category for the Top 100 list, “Business Search.” knuru is a research engine; using short sentences, you can find business information from academic and institutional sources that you might not otherwise have access to. Results are shown as summaries that you can browse without having to click through.

Q: So, what does knuru mean?

A: knuru is a shortened version of “knowledge guru.”