By Guest Author M.E. Simpson
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“Everyone should print, bookmark, digg or tweet this excellent resource.” -editor

While conducting the research and search engine checking I did while compiling this very eclectic list of search engines, directories, tools and stuff related, I realized that there are some very competitive trends in a few directions. The most prominent of those seems to be the effort to create the most artificially intelligent NLP, or Natural Language Process, that can be utilized in a search engine. More and more search engines are looking for ways to create search engines that “understand,” context, synonyms, meanings, inverted phrases, and more…and well, most of them have been pretty successful at it.

Another trend I noticed is the emphasis on search results produced in “real-time,” and I am still not sure I grasp that concept…I mean, aren’t all results delivered in real time? What other kind of time is there? Is there like, unreal time? When a search result pops up after I’ve input a search term, that time sure feels real to me….even more real at 3a.m, after working on an article for the past 9 hours, when my butt has turned numb, and my neck feels like it’s in a vice. But yes, there is a newer method of finding fresher, more immediately published material on a continually updated basis, that search engines are now capable of retrieving. This is especially true with news, blog, and social search engines, all which serve a more immediate need for currency, trends, and “what’s hot.”

That being said, I feel I must apologize, because the following list is a bit helter-skelter. It begins with some search engines from a list that was provided to me by the very alternative-search-engine knowledgeable Charles Knight, so that I could include some of the newest and most popular search engines – many of which still seem to be undergoing construction and additions. This is not an alphabetized list, nor even a categorized list, but simply listed in the order that I searched each search engine, directory or whatever. The newest ones are first, some of the middle alternative search engines are in the middle, also thanks to Charles Knight, and then some of the older favorites are last – although you may find this is not entirely a set description either. I hope this list helps anyone looking for stuff they can’t find. Though I had a decent idea of what kind of alternative search engines are out there, I learned some things myself. Have fun looking it all up; some of them really are amazing, and others are just plain cool. I have at least 30 of these saved on my own favorites list, and all of them are worthwhile.

Some Newer Search Engines:

1. One Riot.com is one of the coolest and best new social search engines that searches the web in real time. Users find the freshest and newest social news, blogs and videos on OneRiot, because this real time search engine delivers results as they emerge.

2. Bing.com – in the course of writing this article, Bing went from almost ready to fully available as a search engine. It is what Microsoft is calling a “Decision engine,” fully equipped with intuitive features that will deliver more relevant and faster results for your “decision-making.” Like many other new search engines and sites, Bing can answer direct questions, such as “What is the capital of Moldova?” differentiate synonyms, and is equipped to compute human language, rather than just text or keywords of a search query.

3. Eeggi.com - an acronym that stands for engineered, encyclopedic, global and grammatical identities) and claims to be the world’s first “Information engine,” according to the website. With eeggi, searches can include synonyms, understand and differentiate between words such as “understand” and “comprehend,” and be able to analyze and work around the differences in their meanings. Eeggi also reduces irrelevant search results, providing only specific and detailed queries, as well as search several languages at once, find conclusive and deductive results, respond to users directing search magnitude, and respond to direct questions.

4. Powerset.com – this is the first search engine that developed a human language search function, meaning that it is an attempt to have computers understand the way we talk. Though Powerset for now, only searches wiki articles, it also answers questions directly, and can understand your words, instead of just text – you can express your search in keywords, phrases, or direct questions. Because of Powerset, several other “human language” search engines have been brought into the web search engine world.

5. SurfCanyon.com – this is a powerful new free browser extension that personalizes and optimizes your search on any search engine or directory, including Google, Yahoo, Bing, Craigslist, and more. The software “figures out” what you want, and them makes relevant suggestions, much like Jinni.com does for movies.

6. Imprezzeo.com – an image search engine that allows you to search for other images with examples of images – essentially, it is an image-oriented search engine, that uses images for both reference and results.

7. Yahoo! BOSS – the BOSS is an acronym for Build your Own Search Service. This is a project by Yahoo to encourage innovation in search engines. Using Boss, anyone can add their ideas, content, and data to Yahoo’s Boss system to create their own unique search engine, by utilizing Yahoo’s entire search index, crawling, page rank and relevancy algorithms.

8. Deep Web Technologies – in addition to being a search engine itself, it also has powered and created an enormous collective of research search engines under the name. Due to its powerful deep web reach, finding information and relevance that most search engines cannot reach, and also working in real time; Deep Web Technologies has created several search engines under its main name:

9. Biznar – re-searches for businesses

10. ScienceResearch.com – a science research engine, with multiple advanced options, and personalized options for customized research

11. Mednar – medical research engine

12. Scitopia.org – a science, technology and engineering search engine for researchers, focusing on scholarly documents

13. WorldWideScienceAlliance – a global search engine gateway that provides access to national and international databases and portals

14. Collecta.com – though they have not launched yet, their site claims to be the web’s most powerful real time search engine, posting photos and posts from sites like Twitter, WordPress, Flickr, and more. What makes them different from other real-time search engines remains to be seen.

15. Taptu.com – a search engine engineered specifically for mobile devices, like the iPhone and the iTouch.

16. Yottalook.com - a free medical imaging search engine that provides decision support at the point of care using proprietary relevance and ranking algorithms by iVirtuoso, and is designed to provide the practicing radiologists the most important and most relevant information they need at the time of patient care.

17. Cooliris.com – an imaging search engine, plug-in, browser add-on, and mobile imaging device that displays search images on a 3-D wall, and has many other very effective features that offer fast and colorful ways to both search and display images, photos and videos.

18. Tazti.com – a speech recognition search tool that can be downloaded to any browser for special needs and hands free searches

19. Viewzi.com – an image search engine that displays search results as a mini-screen that you can flip through as though they are a picture gallery – this means that page rank becomes less of an issue, because of how fast you can flip through results. Viewzi also can be downloaded as a plug-in or add-on.

20. LiveHit.com – a new “social service discovery” that is more than another social network site, it also features the use of many blog search engine tools, showing you what’s hot, and what will become hot, with a special news/events/topic prediction as part of its functions. As with any social networking, an account is required, but it is free.

21. Gazopa.com – a “similar image search service” which allows you to search images using your own photos, drawings, web images and keywords. You can also search for a similar image by extracting a color or shape from another image. Because many images are difficult to explain with text, GazoPa allows you to use partial images and image characteristics to find other images you’re looking for.

22. Kosmix – a general search engine that brings up a magazine-like search result when a search term, phrase or keyword is put in, everything definitions, to relevant links, videos about the topic, articles, photos, blogs, news, and more. Rather than bringing up one result on one topic, it interprets the searched word or phrase and brings up all areas of relevancy, in multiple web forms and media.

23. Worio – according to their site, “Worio is a discovery engine that works alongside keyword search to expose you to stuff you’ve been missing using search alone.” Worio also personalizes your search, and “learns” your interests through various methods. When a search term or keywords are input, many other popular results are provided with links to Youtube, Wiki, news sites, and so on, with relevance to the search term. Worio also offers a Library and a Friends page, both which require accounts, for which you can save all tagged pages, and socially network with friends on facebook.

24. SearchMe – According to their “about” page, SearchMe “lets you see what you’re searching for. As you start typing, categories appear that relate to your query. Choose a category, and you’ll see pictures of web pages that answer your search. You can review these pages quickly to find just the information you’re looking for, before you click through.” Effectively, SearchMe is a multimedia search engine that allows you to search for search topics in text, music, video, blogs, news, and more, and also displays its search results in the same multi-media presentation, with a combination of both multimedia and non-multimedia search results.

25. Pixsy.com – another search engine that has options of music, video, entertainment and news searches, but seems to require a certain download to be installed, in order to bring up relevant results. I typed in “Explosions in the Sky” under the music search, and it brought up a page with a bunch of explosions in Iraq; at the top of the page it said, “sorry, you have not installed AJAX..” I was looking for a band, not actual explosions, so I haven’t quite figured this engine out yet.

26. TheFindGreen.com – a shopping search engine that focuses on green products, stores, merchandise, and local searches that offer the same.

27. Truevert.com – another green search engine, that also focuses on context instead of just text. For instance, if you type in [hybrid cars], the results will be more about how to convert your car to run on vegetable oil or something, not a bunch of Acura and Honda advertisements.

28. Greenmaven – another green search engine that focuses on green and sustainable websites and topics. They also offer research tools, and an outspoken mission to strengthen the economy through opening the green collective to the web.

29. Videosurf – a free video search engine that searches CNN, Comedy Central, ESPN, Hulu, YouTube, and more for any video, including full t.v. episodes. It’s a step up from Hulu and Fancast, because of its search engine.About.com – an answer directory, sort of a mixture of an encyclopedia, search directory, and trend site.

30. Mytopia – an online gaming community that stretches across both web and mobile platforms, enabling users to have profiles, avatars, chat, messaging, leaderboards, tournaments and competitions in real-time on their iphones, Blackberrys, Razors, Windows mobile, and many other smartphones and mobile operating systems, as well as on Facebook and Open Social.

31. GoPlanit – a recommendation engine that plans a trip for you in advance or as you go, with flight, lodging, restaurant and activity recommendations. User account is required, but the site is free to use, and may take a little time to learn how to use the sight.

32. Tweegee – offers each tween-aged user to create their own personal website, message through email and chat, play online games, create their own characters, read news relevant to their age group, and write their own articles – all in all, an extremely unique and creative social networking site for tween-aged youngsters

33. Ấngströ – a people search site for businesses, something kind of resembling a background check, but it pulls from sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook for information and profiling, for businesses and people needing information on companies and individuals.

34. Popego – a social/recommendation/browser/search that sets you up with your own interests on the web, by searching and filtering out specific videos, articles, news, blogs, and other things that match your personal interests.

35. Mixtt – a new social networking site focused on arranging social grouping and meeting according to city. Unlike most social networking sites that simply aim to enhance time spent online, Mixtt encourages users to meet offline, and mingle with those that would be normally “outside” their normal group of friends and acquaintances, not only regarding who they know, but regarding those that may otherwise be outside their typical subgroup or socially respective common interests. MIXTT is a great source for establishing a new and exciting social life, professional networking, dating, play-time, or any aspect of life that can benefit from an easier and creative way of meeting new and different people. MIXTT encourages people, albeit perhaps passively, to break down barriers of social, socioeconomic, and even racial barriers that may inhibit people from becoming friends, which is truly an admirable quest.

36. Grockit – this is a great combination of a learning and social site, where people learn information by teaching each other in a game-style platform. Grockit users can study for their GMATs, GREs, LSATs, SATs, ACTs, MCATs and more in a creative, fun, and social online environment. A great study and social tool for high school, college, and post-graduate users.

37. Bojam – a site that brings both professional and serious amateur musicians together by allowing them to upload their music, edit and team up with other musicians from around the world. It’s a combination of a both a web-recording studio, and a social platform for musicians to mingle, mix, and play music together with those that match their style and interests. A brilliant engine for providing outlets and searches for other musicians and music to enhance and employ any user’s musical ambitions.

38. Deepdyve – a deep web academic search engine that currently searches for scholarly research on medical and life sciences, and is working to expand their academic topics and broader research sources.

39. iSeek – is what they call a targeted discovery engine, and was voted by The Search Race to be the best Alternative Search Engine last year. iSeek can target and narrow your search results according to topic, source, place, time and date, locations, people, resources, definitions, and also has an additional education search engine. iSeek is definitely a search engine to keep on your favorites list to frequently use, as it is one o the best alternative search engines out there.

Some Middle Search Engines:

40. Ixigo – a travel, hiking, biking and bussing search engine, with features like blogs by experts about do’s and don’ts of a biking adventure or vacation, flight and ticket searches, and much more.

41. Joost – a television, music and video search engine that makes recommendations in addition to traditional title and name searches; it also features blogs, groups and a user-recommended list of shows, movies and music according to searched choices.

42. Jogli – a music search engine where you can search millions of artists, songs, lyrics, musicians, etc.

43. Kindernet – a search engine especially for children, which not only provides search results relevant to kids, but also provides a childproof search results index.

44. Myperfect.com.au – a “choice” engine that finds your perfect “thing” by asking you questions and providing a list of results, eventually narrowing it down until you find the perfect one. The home page starts you off by suggesting looking for your favorite beer, phone, camera, career, and so on, then takes you to a page where you are asked questions that help determine how to narrow the search results – a very innovative way to search for something you love, or even for something you are not quite sure how to find for yourself. I put this one on my favorites list immediately, I thought it was a fabulous search tool.

45. Nozasearch – if any of you have ever had any experience in non-profit organizations, you know how many of them struggle with funding. Nozasearch helps find charitable organizations and donors for non-profit organizations and charities, with features of advanced search and local searches. A fantastic search that is making a proactive contribution to world peace and prosperity.

46. Samepoint – a conversation search engine, which in my opinion, is a brilliant kind of search engine. It varies from regular blog search engines because it searches more than blogs for the conversations that contain your search, and it varies from other search engines because it searches pages that expire and/or are never indexed at all, due to their techie smarts.

47. RSS micro – an RSS feed search engine that offers narrowed results according to date and time the feeds were published in hours, days, weeks, or anytime. It also provides search results in real-time, allowing for the newest and freshest RSS feeds published.

48. Newstree.org – an alternative news search that searches your topic through news media that is not associated with major coporations. For example, when I searched “outsourcing,” it gave me search results from truthout.org, Democratic Underground, and World Net Daily. A great tool for finding little seen or heard news, as well offbeat topics.

49. Megaglobe – an international/global search engine, that not only focuses on global news, economy, politics, legal matters, top stories, and more, but also offers a feature that allows you to ask a question, which is then answered by other users – a pretty cool feature for a search engine.

50. Sproose – this is sort of like a reverse recommendation engine, or what Sproose calls a recommendation-voting engine, and is the only one of its kind. Users determine the page rank of results by voting on them when the input a search. Sproose also offers recommendation articles, videos and products based upon user searches.

51. Artcyclopedia – an art search directory, that allows you to search by title of work, artist, or the style of art, such as abstract expressionism, art nouveau, post-impressionism, Renaissance, and so on. For each stylistic search, it offers several past and contemporary artists to further research. Thus far, this is one of the best general art search sites I’ve found.

52. Swotti – a product search engine that allows you to search, rate and compare products in over 20 categories like music, entertainment, literature, movies, videos, and more.

53. Sensebot – an information search engine or browser plug-in that summarizes multiple web pages in your search results, for a quicker decision-making process to establish the results that are more relevant.

54. Swamii – the site calls itself “the what’s new engine,” but it is basically a “continual” search engine. The way it works starts with a user account, followed by the user entering any information or searches about stuff they want continuous alerts on, and Swamii then alerts the user on an ongoing basis about the input search. Actually, this is a great tool for someone that writes about stuff on an ongoing basis, or is doing research over a period of time, or even someone with a hobby or pursuit that wants to keep up with it.

55. Trovit – a classifieds search engine that serves 11 different countries, where users can find apartments, jobs, cars and more.

56. Twing – a search engine that searches forums, such as music forums, art forums, green forums, and more.

57. Zvents – an events search engine that provides local searches for festivals, live music, theater performances, shows and performances, concerts, and more. You can also promote an event on this search engine as well, or look for the ideal thing to that is in close reach of your local area.

58. USAspending.gov – a search engine that allows the user to find out exactly where their tax dollars are going, on either a federal or state level; for instance if you want to find out how your state used a grant or loan, or how monies are distributed for any federal government program, this site facilitates that, as well as provides information on grants and loans for various entities and individuals.

59. Zeadoo – a search tool that allows you to search all your favorites from one page; you can import your favorites list, or download the Zeadoo extension to your browser.

60. Zocdoc – this search site is especially handy if you’ve just gotten new health insurance and need to find a doctor and/or dentist in your area that accepts your insurance – Zocdoc searches just those kinds of things for you.

61. Cognition.com – an NLP search tool that has very sophisticated and advanced abilities to compute human language and semantics, while also retaining high relevance in results

62. Factbites – in addition to delivering search results for search queries, this search engine also lists the results in simple sentences, so that a user may more clearly understand what the web page is about, and how relevant it is to the search

63. Faroo – I feel slightly biased about this site, simply because it is one of the most idealistic out there, and I have not yet come across another one like it. This is a peer-to-peer website, where users passively decide page-rank algorithms, determined by which pages are looked at for a particular search. Not only that, but Faroo has a democratic, and almost even a socialist approach to their revenue – they share advertising revenue with users that have accounts. This is one of the best ways I’ve seen a company try to defeat the beast of monopoly.

64. BlogDimension – this blog search engine doesn’t just search blogs in its index, but also podcasts, online videos, images and microblogs, such as on Twitter.

65. Feefiefoefirm – a law firm search engine, something that could come in really handy when you want to sue MacDonald’s for getting a cup of hot coffee spilled on your arm.

66. Evri – this search engine is attempting to network contextually relevant information about a specific person, place or thing with other equivalent articles, blogs, etc found on the web; Evri also makes recommendation based upon searches

67. Exalead – the lay-out of search results on Exalead gives you several options – regular text lay-out, text and thumbnail lay-out, and text, thumbnail with extra info lay-out. Exalead also offers narrowed searches according to multimedia, directory, related links, related terms and more.

68. Hakia – hakia narrows down search results to the most credible web pages and web sites in your search results, in order to save time wasted on results that may appear relevant, or have related content regarding a particular search, but that stem from less-than-credible sites. Hakia strives to eliminate those through ontological and semantic NLP technology.

69. GenieKnows – this unique little search engine is sort of a cross between a local search and a travel search. It searches all over Canada and the U.S., allowing users to find things like “where to find antiques in Montreal,” or “the best plastic surgeons in NYC,” or even small town information about events, places and people.

70. iSearch – a free people search that simply allows users to search for people using their first and last names and location, their email address, phone number or even their screen name.

71. I’mVivo – a social search engine that is a social network as well; it searches social media and networks, regular media, and other content to produce search results, with the most popular social pages being the highest ranking.

72. LoanKrunch – a loan search engine that allows you to compare loan rates for real estate, cars, personal loans, and more, without divulging any personal information, so that you can find your ideal loan company or bank, without a bunch of difficult research.

73. KoolTorch – a search tool that can be added to your browser in order to organize and visually lay-out search results on a page in a neat, simplistic graph of up to 100 results per page.

74. Grokker – a sophisticated enterprise search engine management tool (whew that is a mouthful) for businesses and research that provides federated search to millions of databases for a huge index of search resources, as well as visualization techniques that allow users to understand and review their search results through things like narrowed topical columns, filters, graphs, and much more.

75. CrimeSpider – a crime and law enforcement search engine that categorizes crimes and their websites, so that you don’t have to go to each website looking for the one that fits your search.

..And some Older Favorites:

76. Clusty – Clusty is a meta search engine, but also delivers the search results in clusters for easier viewing – the best of both cluster and meta search engines

77. Scirus – a science search engine that is oriented more for everyday web users, rather than high-brow research; however Scirus only search scientific web pages and likewise with the search results.

78. Lyricsmode – a music lyrics search directory, that allows you to search according to keyword, artist, song title, or genre

79. AjaxWhois – a domain name search engine that will tell you right away if the domain name you want for your website is available or not.

80. EducationWorld – an educational search engine that not only focuses on educational material and websites, but also offers resources for teachers as well. This search engine has one of the broader education spans than some academic search engines with more focused topical circumferences.

81. Answers.com – a fact search and answer engine, and has also been around for a while.

82. Ask.com - one of the most popular alternative search engines; some of their features include search results that offer stock quotes, famous people, smart answers(answering direct questions) and a binocular-style preview at other websites.

83. Chacha – an older human-derived answer engine, that offers categories and can also be used from mobile phones by through text, or calls.

84. Demandbase.com – a business to business search engine that identifies which visitors are visiting a business site, targets those that fit in to the business’s target market, and helps to turn web traffic into sales leads.

85. Dmoz.org –the oldest and most comprehensive human-edited directory on the web, maintained and constructed by a vast global community of volunteer editors.

86. Dogpile – one of the older and well-known meta-search engines; it searches Google, Yahoo! Windows Live Search Ask.com, and delivers search results from a huge index of relevant pages.

87. FamousLocations – a movie location search, which comes in really handy when you want to go see a movie, and cannot for the life of you figure out how to find out movie theater times…much less where they are.

88. Firstgov.gov – The U.S. Government’s official web portal, and probably the biggest legal/law search sites available

89. GoshMe – a search engine that searches meta search engines, which search other search engines – in other words, a meta, meta search engine

90. Happyhour.com – a beer search engine! How cool is that.

91. Icerocket – a blog search engine, that offers some really cool features, such “Ice Spy,” that searches what other searchers are searching for, a host for RSS feeds, blog trackers, and top blog trends delivered on the home page that take no searching at all.

92. Indeed.com – a meta-search engine for jobs

93. Info.com - a meta-search engine that searches Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live Search, Ask.com and About.com

94. Jinni– a movie search site that allows you type in a genre and basic plot of a movie, and either matches a movie to your description, or suggests movies that fit your taste. Great idea for movie buffs.

95. Kartoo – a clustering search; it delivers search results in a different visual presentation of side to side filtering, rather than in a single-file list; it also offers options to change the way the results are delivered

96. LinkedIn – a business to business social networking site, with features that allow business to link up under a similar business interest to attract clients, employees, advertisers, and more.

97. Nyfa.org – a directory of artistic jobs, juried and non-juried shows accepting submissions, fellowships, residencies, and opportunities that are available in NYC and other areas.

98. Quintara – a really unique search engine that offers visual manipulation and navigation; it has unique features like a list of visual search options on the left hand column and text results on the left, and a web search specifically just for kids, allowing them to search with visual skills, rather than having to read everything and become confused. Quintara is one of those search engines that has to be tried yourself in order to really understand, because as is the case with most visually-oriented things, its difficult to articulate the experience. You just have to experience it.

99. SearchEdu.com – one of the best and largest educational and academic search sites

100. SovLit.com – a search site for and about Russian Literature

101. Topix.net – a news search engine, that offers searches and home page listings of most recent news and top stories narrowed search results according to news sources, local news searches, and an easily navigable magazine style lay-out.