As someone who has to do a lot of research, I have used a lot of different search engines & search sites and recently Charles Knight of Read/WriteWeb came up with a list of 100 alternative search engines. Some were familiar to me, some were not and I knew of a couple dozen more not on his list. So, I thought, I’ll just peruse them and write up a review of each … well, the rumors are true, I have personally now seen over 300 search engines and more are on the way. Charles Knight and his group have thoughtfully added an April update so I have added a few more and I’m pretty sure I’ve cleared 300 …

A search engine’s measure of usefulness is pretty simple:

Results are current.
Results are accurate.
Results are quickly delivered.
Results are easy to read/understand.
Search bar is easy to find.
Paid ads & paid results are highlighted.

These are the 6 things that are “easy” in some senses because it’s all just facts and design … but there is one more … the 7th is the difference between a 5-star meal and eating at Appleby’s. It is:

RESULTS THAT ARE USEFUL

On the surface, that doesn’t sound like much but if you really think about about it, a lot of people can tell what year the wine is from, the kind of grapes and the winery but what does that vintage actually taste like? Ah, that’s the critical difference. There is a reason GOOGLE has 60%+ of the search and growing. It delivers the 6 main requirements every mili-second of everyday plus the elusive 7th one. Google is a sommelier at a 5-star restaurant and the others are a description of the wine from the Appleby’s wine list (sorry, not trying to pick on Appleby’s

Is it perfect? No of course not but Google’s market share is the difference between the results of MSN/Live’s or Yahoo’s search as witnessed by consumers and users everyday. That is the magic that is Google, taking a bunch of links and determining what’s the one to five that humans doing search really, really want to gleam information from – that 1 to 5 of the best of the best and Google nails it pretty much 99.8% of the time. Until Yahoo or MSLive figures it out, they are on a slippery slope.

And really, the have NO ONE to blame because using a search engine is really the ultimate consumer choice – you can make the switch from Google to Yahoo to Baidu in 2 seconds. No other consumer choice is so fickle and so clear. If you buy a box of cookies, you might still finish them so not to waste them. Google has no such luxury. They live and die by every single search and you can switch without cost, without reservation, or without hesitation in 2 seconds but the reason you don’t is they deliver.

So, do we really need another 100-300 search engines? Well yes and no. No, there is no one close to Google in general searches – there are some interesting ones in specific searches but on the other hand, there’s no reason why someone shouldn’t try and topple Google. Not a very easy task but hey, it’s the internet – anything can happen in 2 seconds and 2 seconds by 6.5 billion people, maybe not today but there’s always the day after tomorrow …

THE PROCESS

Basically I selected an item that you can purchase, and a word with multiple meanings to see what kind of results I get. I did not spend hours on each site exploring every nook & cranny but if it can’t deliver basic search results, what else do you need to know?

Also NOTE: If I left anyone off, sorry but if I could not unearth you after finding about 300 of your brethern, you need to get on the internet on-ramp.

And there are many that did not make the cut:

Blog directories that required blogs to submit to be included, I just skipped over those – especially ones with egregious typos like “Catergoy” (yes, I’m talking to you GETBLOGS).

If it’s a portal of info but just searched itself, I did not bother to include it. I was on the edge in regards to Answers.com or About.com – both fine places but since their pages show up in Google, I did decide to skip them. Sorry, dudes. How about an active link to make up for it?

I also skipped the new use-us-to-use-Google and we get a charity donation. I let you sort out the real from the scams but since they all use one of the major search engines, it’s not really new new.

There are some that are apps that require downloading. I skipped those.

I think I left off most of the pay-per-click search engines as they didn’t seem to offer much in the way of delivering actual useful info.

I also did not bother to test out all of Google’s own granular “stand-alone” search options or the custom created ones.

I did not include shopping searches if they only included a few stores.

Or sites like I AM BORED which are amusing but have poor search features and just like being at a carnival, the point of the site is just to wander around aimlessly … mocking others

* At first, I wasn’t going to include sites, portal or databases if they just searched themselves but then some offered info available nowhere else – and if the purpose of a search engine is to unearth info, what better than a site that delivers you 2 steps closer? So technically, they are not all search engines per say but then you could also argue that search sites that rely on a multitude of other search engines to do the work are not technically search engines but just front ends … so I widen the parameters of a search engine concept to include:

Search Engines
Front Ends of Meta/Multitude Search Engines
Massive Info Sites with Search intending to deliver you information

THE LINK MUST BE EARNED

Any site not linked is because I didn’t think they were worthy of a link, just drop back by Charles Knight’s website – he has 100 of them in alpha order and linked. The other 200 you can find on Google … which might not be vice versa true of the other search engines

All of these are US or English-language sites. I might get around to testing Asian & European ones later.

BOOKMARK IT!

Accona: Their “regular” search is nothing interesting, the usual stuff but their BUSINESS search is quite useful for market research purposes.

Blinkx.com: Video Search and it actually does. It found videos on YouTube that YouTube’s own search couldn’t find. Nice.

BlogPulse: Not surprising, AC Nielsen has the means to create a very nice looking site with fast, wide ranging blog search & results. One of the best.

BusinessResearch: Not a great resource but pretty nicely defined one. They will search most of the market research companies such as Gartner, IDC, etc … so even though their reports are pay-to-read, at least you know what’s out there without having to go to each. It also offers you a chance to search at once through the 12 main business news deliverers such as WSJ, NY Times, CNN Money, etc … so you can get everything in one fell swoop. Well conceived and fast – the design of the site could be updated to a more professional look but the results and features of the site are excellent.

ClipBlast.com: Video Search. Good front/home page. Fast results.

Edmunds: Amazingly complete database of autos, auto dealerships, auto info, etc … there is nothing you can conceive of in regards to buying or selling a used or new car that is not on here. They added videos and don’t forget to read this sad/hilarious feature when they sent a journalist to spend 3 months selling cars. Not affiliated is Kelly Blue Book for used car pricing. National Highway Safety DB is here and here.

FindSounds.com: Sound File/SFX Search. It Works. Not something most people need everyday but nice to know it’s there.

FreeLunch: Links & search to (mostly free) economic & business data worldwide. Very comprehensive.

Google: Just in case anyone thought I forgot – I already listed a link above. All hail Google search. Thank you for resisting the madness that overtakes everyone else who seems the need to add everything under the moon to the front page. Simplicity rules! These guys have put all of Google’s searches on one page.

Healia: Health related search – on one hand, a Google search of the same condition returns results that seem just as informative. The one thing that Healia offers are FILTERS for the search results such as BASIC or ADVANCED and about 20 other choices so while it might not be a site you look at everyday (or hope you don’t have to), it’s probably nice to have tucked in your bookmarks when the need arises. The US Institute of Health is here.

Internet Archive-WayBack Machine: Simply brilliant. If not for their foresight, the early days of the internet would’ve been treated like empheral and we would lament all that we cannot see anymore – sure, it’s a lot of gray pages nad flashing bright pink arrows but the past is the past – great for market intelligence research – invaluable!

Intuite: UK based search of UK research, university lectures, scholarly reports, etc … (damn, I have to spend all this time removing extraneous “u’s” from the quotes An amazing amount of useful stuff.

Knuru: Affiliated with Wharton@Knowledge, one of the best strategic business info websites so this presumably is an extension – very straightforward but excellent search results – type in your business related search and you get results in two tabs – STRATEGIC & NEWS. Excellent.

Last.FM: A music recommendation site that actually works. I typed in an obscure band just starting out that I know from MySpace. LastFM actually recommended other artists from their genre. Impressive.

Librarian Internet Index: Nice research resource. Nice, deep, complete with specialty results that are hard to unearth elsewhere. Excellent.

Library of Congress-Prints & Photos: Remember, they belong to us, “We the People …” (well for US citizens). Library of Congress – everything else. The Law Library of Congress is here.

Like.com: Visual Search – so far mostly clothes but interesting and it works.

MagPortal: Searches through all magazines online – also gives you a pulse of what ideas/topics are being covered out there. Design a little weird but pretty fast and accurate results. Excellent.

MelissaData: A STAGGERING amount of links ranging from zip code to US census data to income stat demographcs to fatal accident statistics.

NorthernLight Business: One of the best business, marketing and marketing intelligence searches. Some results are available on a pay basis but always worthwhile to see what is out there. Advanced Search Here.

PageBull: A real graphics preview search. You get ALL your results in snapshot thumbnails form – though in this case, thumbnail actually undersells what you get, more like giant palm sized previews. You can select 4×3, 2×6 or 3×4 as your display choice so you get 2, 3 or 4 web homepage snapshot previews – perhaps not useful if you’re researching cooper tubing but very nice if you’re researching art. Very useful. very nice. Uses the Yahoo search engine.

PicSearch: Blazing fast & accurate. Can’t ask much of a image/photo search engine.

Pipl: Damn, there is no hiding from Pipl on the internet. (In your best evil bad guy cliche accent country-of-your-choice), “Your dossier is bulging …”

Podzinger.com: Podcast Search. Works pretty solidly.

SearchForVideo: An actual url that does actually does what it says. Very comprehensive video search plus very nice thumbnail screenshots. Recommended!

SeeQPod: A nice web 2.0 design music & video search. Tried a lot of obscure tracks – found them all floating around the internet. You choose the version that you are looking for, then just drag to the right as your save window and hit play. Nice.

Swamii: While Google Alerts is nice, Swamii is much better – for some odd reason, Google Alerts results don’t seem very comprehensive. Swamii allows you to type in keywords and save them – you then get a daily sweep of the internet of “What’s New” pertaining/including your keywords. Your updates can be daily, every two days or weekly. A great marketing intelligence tool to have in your toolbox. It’s in beta but it’s great.

Technorati: Unless you’ve been in an underground cave for 5 years, the best blog search is still Technorati. The new WTF feature is a funny and a worthwhile addition.

TheFind: Very nice, quick and visual shopping search & comparison. Nice.

VideoSift: Flash video search & site (though most videos are embedded from other places) – only Flash, no other format – it does make for easy saving to the desktop.

Wikipedia: An amazing showcase of the power of the web community. It is staggering what information you can find there though of course, people might question why there are 10,000 words on Jedi training and 2,000 on the Monroe Doctrine but hey, that’s the internet for you. I think it’s brilliant even with the occasional twit who pollute it … it gets fixed quickly.

WorldCat: Useful search results linked to research databases and scholarly sites. Not for general searching but more theory, analyses, research, etc … Also powers ERIC (Educational Resource Information Center) which offers lookup links to libraries carrying journals, etc … Excellent.

Yahoo Finance: So good, it merits its own listing. The best free site for getting all the basic and some not so basic financial & business research. Not as complete as Hoover’s but for free, it’s hard to beat. This is one area Google is way behind Yahoo. NASDAQ Official Stats. Marketwatch Big Charts.

ZabaSearch: So good, it’s a little spooky. It finds people only but it does a pretty good job – there are also portions of the site that cost costs $ but if you have a general idea where someone is …

Zudos: A new and fine market intelligence gathering tool. Type in your search term/companyproduct to check out the online buzz – from blogs to news to postcasts to photos to videos – everything is beautifully displayed on one page. Nicer looking than Swamii but there’s no login where you can build keyword searches though you can just save as a bookmark and return via the web the next day. Unlike Swamii, there is no email daily summary component but still very nice and very useful.

BOOKMARK IT (MAYBE … IF IT’S UP YOUR ALLEY)

43Things: I debated about including it since while you can search it, it’s really not that useful … it’s more useful in a random – clicky, click, click sense … it’s like your neighborhood free spirit – they always have something interesting to say or they’re about to go do something you never thought of … Kramer before Mike Richards went all insane in the brain. So, like a search engine result, you can learn something, what – I have no idea … but it is the beauty of the internet. Someone sat bolt upright in the middle of the night, scribbled some stuff on a legal pad and $10 million dollar in angel funding later, you have an nearly indescribable something.

9 Rules: Great looking site. They seem to a closed community of bloggers (blogs are hosted elsewhere/by others/normal channels) chosen for their the “best in class content,” If you know what topic you want to read about – their search will either turn up some great posts or it will turn up nada. So, the search works or it doesn’t – if the content wasn’t worthy, I’d say skip it but since the content is useful – it might be worth a look for you.

Aardvarksport.net: Well, their regular search is not very good (I’m presuming there’s only one Aardvark Search Group) but the sports one is pretty informative. It looks like it might be a Google custom search but in this case I’ll accept since if you’re searching for an athlete with a common name, it will cut down on your results. If you search for someone more well known, you do tend to get the same results as you would if you just entered that name in Google so it depends on how often you want to search for sports. There is someone starting up a sports stat search but it’s pretty sparse – you’re better off searching through here for stats – BASEBALL, FOOTBALL, BASKETBALL & HOCKEY … Or their custom Google Search (for the 3 Reference.com sites – Hockey NOT theirs). This is not intended to be comprehensive, just a starting point – after all, only baseball fans would launch a project of trying to add a scorecard for every single professional baseball game EVER PLAYED – Retrosheet. Thanks for the suggestion A. Woodstrom.

AgencyCompile: If your needs are to search for an ad, promotions, marketing, design agency … very complete links as well as creative showcases.

AllMusic: Database speed greatly improved but still slow in spots. It’s simply the most comprehensive & deepest music database. Yes, they could do a better job on obscure artists – perhaps even inviting people to submit bios for approval but otherwise, hard to find a competitor this complete. They also offer a MovieDB and one of the few places with a nice VideoGame DB.

AnimalSearch: Probably pretty good for kids looking to do research. A directory lists: animals, animal groups, geography, animal issues, etc … click to see links. Looks useful enough – probably links you can find through Google or yahoo search but this will cut to the chase. Good idea.

Become.com: Decent looking shopping bot & search. Nice design and lots of photos. Looks like they license their content to others.

BoardReader: Not sure why an average person would want to search through and read forum postings but I could certainly see an application for gathering marketing intelligence.

BoardTracker: Pretty good board/forum search but there are several I visit that are not in their database so while useful, not nearly great yet.

BrainBoost: Sentence queries. Excellent animated gif logo … is that any reason to add them to the maybe list? Sure, why not? Plus, it looks very nice. It’s probably best for teenagers or kids to ask it questions … though honestly when I asked why is sky blue, its answers and Googles were just as good so it’s nice but not great … but its animated gif logo is ultra cool.

ClipFire: A nice and quick shopping bot search but text only – useful but not nearly as nice as THEFIND which not only offers up photos but often better pricing. Since I can’t say absolutely 100% that THEFIND always offers up better pricing, so I’ll include ClipFire here for you to decide.

CompletePlanet: Claims to search within 70,000 publicly accessible databases – did not test out every page versus Google but since the pages it returned contained useful research links, it should be considered. Whether it lives up to the hype or not, you might want to investigate further.

CometQuery.com: Search results returned with thumbnail of website along with text link. Very fast so not bad in some circumstances – potentially useful.

CPA Search: Not something I need everyday but nice to know it’s there.

DaytimeNews: What is it with RSS Directories and a worse search than HelloKitty Search? You can look in the directories and view a nice directory and you can go into each site and search but don’t depend on the search engine here.

Eurekster: Not a search engine per say but let’s you create your vertical search. The link is to their directory – from what i could tell, it’s either a huge miss among a few interesting ones but at least it’s easy on the eyes – worth a look and maybe you want to roll your own.

Direct Search: Searches through a lot of government databases. Frankly, I could not get it to work consistently but it looks deep & worthy with lots of links so even if the search is wonky, it will lead you deeper if government resources are your query. It’s look & feel is hideous beaten with an ugly stick.

FactBites.com: Research Search. Returns results of sites offering “facts,” so potentially a good place to start – potentially useful in researching but for some subjects, the return links are pretty sparse so not brilliant but it’s probably a good site for high school students starting a research paper who doesn’t want to chase 50 links.

Feedster.com: News/Blog Search. Acceptable results – useful enough if you’re researching online buzz or curious about the pulse of certain topics but not a very comprehensive search.

FlickrStorm: Another Flickr Image search. Not any better than searching Flickr itself but it does create nice thumbnails and even an online “tray” to collect them. This is pretty specialized but in case anyone has been looking for this – it’s something different at least.

GenieKnows: Delivers what it promises – just search results for video games and videogaming – even topics that might stray outside the realm of videogames, it didn’t fall for my ruse – only videogaming links so if you want nothing to do with First Life as you are happy with your Second life, this is your search engine.

Gigablast: Nice looking logo – this is a blazing fast search engine – I think even faster than Google. It seems to return different results than Google so that’s useful for research. Until I delve into a topic, it’s hard to tell if the return results are better but different is okay. You can decide if it’s worthy but it should merit a little consideration – it’s certainly faster & better than MS Live.

GlobalHealthFacts: Massive & comprehensive.

GlobalSpec: The engineering search engine – it’s not kidding. It is very serious about engineering, mechanical, fluid, optical, etc … a very solid looking website that returns serious results. Unfortunately, I’m not much of an engineer (sure, these cardboard boxes will hold up your 4 ton pickup, then you can work underneath it!) so I can’t verify with a degree of much accuracy but the searches I tested out turned all the right results. So, clearly not for everyone but looks solid for those who would need something like this.

Globe of Blogs: Finally, another RSS Feeder with an actual working search engine (though Technorati is without a doubt the Google AND Yahoo of blog search), Globe of Blogs clearly not essential but at least the search sort of works.

GoArticles: Not as useful as LookSmart but they do unearth some unusual and uncommon but relevant and appropriate links. So, if you do a lot of indepth research, they might turn up something off the beaten path.

Guidestar: Everything you need to know about nonprofit organizations. Free Sign-in required. There is info only available to paid subscribers.

Hakia: An attempt at natural language search and your “real” intentions – but so far, it’s only a nice search but not startling different. It’s fast, it’s current and its results seem deep and worthwhile so you might want to check it out – it’s certainly better than AskJeeves (aka: Ask.com) but that’s a pretty low bar.

Highwire: Stanford University database of peer reviewed journals and publications. Some are free. Easy to search and pricing info is listed plainly.

Hoovers: The first place to start for gathering business & financial intelligence. It’s a paid site but everything is here. There is some basic info you can find here free so check first.

igrep: A developer and IT search engine. Interesting enough and will let you skip some useless entry points so worth a look.

IMDBPro: Of course, more of an info site. The pay site portion contains a massive database of information for researchers and people in the TV & Film industry. There are printed book directories of course but most actually cost more and you never know if the printed book is out of date – with IMDBPro, updating you to current info is a snap. It’s $12.95 a month or $99 for the year. Of course, the main site is still free – IMDB.

Indeed.com: Job search engine. They are not kidding – they do seem to search just about everyone – CareerBuilder to Monster to HotJobs to within company sites. Looks like a good place to start. The Advanced Preferences settings actually seem more functional than some of the job site searches themselves.

InfoMine: Links to thesis, scholarly reports, journals, peer reviews – mostly all pay to read.

Insider Pages: Easily the nicest looking local search & review site. Only a minor quibble – it seems if there are no reviews, it doesn’t show up which may not be all bad as if you’re looking for a dentist or dry cleaner, maybe it’s more important that the reviewed ones are listed … though also keep in mind, many only have 1 rave review so whether that’s legit and worthy is up to you to decide. As the community grows, it should get more valuable.

Jigadig: Search eBay, Overstock & UBid – while eBay’s search works pretty well, Overstock search is weak so this might be useful to see what other bargains are out there.

Keotag is an interesting oddity. After you enter your search choice, it brings up a few sample photos/images and at the bottom are a row of 15 additional places to search from Newsvine to Google to 43 Things. Unlike some other places, it’s fast and the design animation is smooth and buttery Web 2.0 … so I think I’m hypnotized by that. It’s not brilliant but it is quirky and might be right for you.

Kompass: Not nearly as nice of a B2B directory & search as ThomasNet but it’s serviceable.

Kosmix: Interesting enough to be useful for some people. It presents search results with clear broken down by type of information source: Blog, News, images, etc … then you can also tab across from BASIC to ADVANCED to BLOGS to FORUMS. The only glitch is if there is no “topic/subject” heading created by Kosmix, you keywords that it guesses at what you might want but like an encyclopedia, if there’s no match of listings, you are out of luck. I think if you like information organized and you don’t mind presuming their limited links are the best of the best … again, test it out to see if it’s up your alley in how you like to get info from the web.

LawyerTool.com: Not much to look and technically not really a search – more of a directory of links to search but since this is pretty specialized data/databases that you might not easily stumble across – most government and legal sites seem to need a sitemap for he sitemap, this will save you tons of time so it makes the list (if you need legal info).

LiveDeal.com: A sort of nationwide Craigslist for castoff belongings from household items to pets to cars – listings are cheap but not sure how much business is actually transacted but might be worth checking out.

Local.com: Excellent “yellow pages” search.

LookSmart: Not the first place to search but useful for scholarly & business analysis search. Poor design crams all the results in the middle but useful enough. If you’re the type who’s actually gone to page 15 on a Google search, on page 16, you should then switch to LookSmart. Very niche but worth a little look down the line. The Directory is here.

MEDgle: While Healia is a straightforward search engine, MEdgle is slightly different. selecting from a graphical ‘where it hurts’ or ‘what’s the symptoms,” it searches through its own database to give you a medical diagnosis … it’s probably best for hypochronicas stay far, far away before you are quickly convinced you have some tropical disease … ignoring the bottom bit about having eaten a undercooked baboon in the last 72 hours … so approach with caution and remember, it’s NOT an actual doctor, it just plays a one as a database on the internet.

Ms. Dewey: Okay, it’s not particularly useful and loads slowly but if you would like an attractive librarian who walks and motions at you before, during your searches (she is fully dressed, you perv) – here ya go. Is it weird. Sure. Is it useful – not really but if have a lot of time during your workday and you are tired of Google’s white space, here ya go. The reason you should bookmark is it’s the perfect website search to replace in OTHER people’s browsers. And if you search on Ms. Dewey on MsDewey.com, you can get the full scoop on the woman.

MusicSearcher: Not a high recommendation – sparse, not very attractive but seemingly functional. Type in artist to get discography info – click on LP/CD to get track info. Not nearly as nice as many other places but delivers info fast if you’re just looking for some basic info. Not great but useable.

NewsNow (UK): They are not kidding, if you want a lot of news – fast, now and from around the world – did I mention NOW?, this is a great site to check out. In addition the search engine is blazing fast for corporate, financial & news searches.

Oddpath: Not indespensible yet but we could definitely use more local searches and this is a good start – very fast, clean design.

Oodle: Classified Search nationwide – probably better off on eBay … but worthwhile.

OpinMind: A search through Twitter-like blog postings – not much point-a-to-point-b info but might be useful for market intelligence – for instance, you can type in your company name and see the “sentimeter” where you stand if you stand at all … you get a listing of positive blog thoughts on the left and those that are “con” on the rigt and a sentimeter measurement scale … and it’s also a chance to catch up on teenager SMS

Phaster: Phaster is a tough call – perhaps if it were better looking, it would be ore inviting to use – now, it seems like you (as the user) is asked too much. It bills itself as a “Encyclopedia Reference Desk” and you can search several dozen serious research and info DB sites though NOT all at once so unlike most search engines – you really need to decide what you want to search the “Exploratorium” choice or the “Encyclopedia” choice – my feeling is it’s veritical nad horizontal and just not very inviting. You might feel differently.

Photarium: While mostly a blog directory and there’s no actual search – they have thoughtfully listed every TAG on one (huge) page so you can search on the page for the term and click to go – while not very deep, it might offer you a blog not found elsewhere.

Pretrieve: Public Record Search Engine. I couldn’t find a whole lot but it seems to be linked to another couple dozen online databases so it’s worth a look to test out yourself.

Project Vote Smart: Electorial Candidates DB. The Lobbying Database is here.

Pronto.com: A shopping search engine. Looks pretty good – better than Froogle – looks clean. Seems okay – still not the Google of shopping comparison sites but better organized than most others – worthy of a longer trial.

Recruit.Net: Looks to be a fairly comprehensive overseas jobs search engine & compilation – jobs look to be mostly in Asia – which seems logical.

Releton.com: Normally, I don’t really get the whole dual or more searches since unlike 10 years ago, when the web was then not completely trolled then so I could see you wanting to gather up a slew of searches and see it all but now with Google & others, why not just search on several search engines individually? But Releton has a cool enough feature for marketers and those interesting in SEO or just general search engine ranking dynamics – Releton searches Google & Yahoo with a 50-50 weight to each BUT then offers a slide bar where you can go 100% Google to 0% Yahoo and every point in between and you can see the page rankings change! The average person might not find this fascinating but as a marketing geek, it’s pretty cool.

Riya: Photo/Visual Search. Not brilliant yet but potentially useful.

Rollyo: Interesting concept of creating your own search engine by choosing from your favorites to search from … their blog search is particularly good even if you choose not to create your own.

RSSNetwork: Good collection of RSS feeders and blog coverage – the category page is comprehensive with solid links within – unfortunately the search is pretty bad so essentially search within blogs in non-existent – though you can manually search its directories and sub-listings.

ScienceResearch: From the same guys who brought you the great BusinessResearch.com, here is the drill down search devoted to all things science.

Scirus: A great, serious research source or as they put it, “Scientific Information Only.” Pretty much on target and a great place to look for real information and analysis. The National Science Foundation is here.

Scroogle: Claims to strip out your cookies or identifying IP address – too lazy to test out fully but seems interesting enough. Based on Google search and if you don’t mind the Win95 graphics. Related, From one of our posts, how to stop/pause your Google Search History.

Searchbot: Might be the weirdest new search engine and again, if you have a lot of free time and this one you can actually bring the kids because you do literally build your own search-robot. In the time it takes to literally assemble this searchbot, you could complete 15 other searches but what’s the rush, wouldn’t you rather drag illustrated elements to piece together a robot and then give it search brains? There is a cool animated graphic of the Google and Yahoo logo flying into its’ brain pan – then it returns results in 9 thumbnails. It’s all very slick and the animation is better than a lot airing on TV but it really depends on how much energy you wish to expend on building a robot to a search you can do in Google and Yahoo in 3 seconds?

SearchBug: Not exactly the smartest name but a reasonably fast and extensive people search (of public data records) along with company searches and a variety of reverse lookups.

SEC: Security Exchange Main & EDGAR. FDIC Region Economic Analyses. The Department of Commerce search of its archives (to 2002) are here. The GPO Economic Indicators DB is here. US Int’l Trade info database is here.

Sidekiq: Another multi searcher. Not very attractive looking but fast. A list on the left showcases a couple dozen search choices, clicking brings up the 10 or search engine within each genre (Image Search: Google, Flickr, Snap, etc …). what nice is after you enter your search result, it returns results in your frame on the right – so if you go down the search engine list on your left, and just starting clicking, it refreshes the right frame with your new search results – smart. Most others who boost as many always go to the site forcing you to come back to search again AND re-typing the search query. Sidekiq is much smarter than that.

Summarize: Nice straightforward, clean design. Type in a product you’re interested in, it will round up every review of the product. There is a color bar to show you the range and grouping of reviews – plus further details of the reviews by clicking on item. Very fast.

Srchr: I’m not really convinced multi searches are very useful for searches itself but rather interesting in a marketing, SEO and marketing intelligence sense and of the multitudes out there, at least Srchr has the right interface (even if it could use a little sprucing up). Typing in your phrase will search a half dozen sites – some others potentually will search 20 sites but if you have to key or copy 20 times, what’s the point?

SurfWax: If you want your search results with no summaries (no “preview” snippet of text within link) on the front page so you can see 30 links without having to scroll. If you click on the magnifying glass, it opens the link on the right frame (in text format – no graphics) but what’s interesting it lists all words that appear on the web page as “Site’s FocusWords” and offers you a chance to read that portion of the website without actually going there. I’m intrigued and will test it out further.

TalkDigger: I’ll tentatively add it here even though I didn’t find any immediate usefulness. In theory, it will track “conversations” across the web/blogs, etc … but the search engine seemed weak and returned random results. But it might be worth exploring further for market research.

ThomasNet: “the most comprehensive resource for industrial information, products, services, CAD drawings, and more