I know you can’t live without Google. Whether or not you use Google’s other products, I am sure you use their search engine almost everyday. And there is no reason you should not. It is by far the best and the fastest search engine and clearly the market leader in almost all countries. In fact the word ‘search’ is now synonymous with the word google; search it or google it, it’s all the same.
As much as Google has evolved since its inception, the internet too has changed drastically and has spawned upon a huge number of alternative search engines, some of them being really good in what they do.
This list mentions ten such innovative search engines. So ditch Google for a day and try them out. See if you find any of them really interesting to stick around with. I’d love to know your thoughts.
- Kosmix
Kosmix is a seriously useful search engine which searches your query across different sites like Wikipedia, Google Image Search, Flickr, Youtube, CNN and different categories like audio, video, news, blogs, pictures and displays all the results nicely organized in different boxes on a single page.
A great way to do research on the net.
- Download Any Stuff
Download Any Stuff uses Google in the background to pull out free mp3 songs, ebooks, software, torrents, games..almost anything which can be downloaded for free and is listed in Google. You can also narrow down your search results by clicking on different categories it lists on the search page.
- VideoSurf
VideoSurf is an excellent video search engine which displays videos from popular video sharing sites like Youtube and Metacafe on one page. It lets you browse them visually and provides many ways to refine the results and watch the videos.
Another cool thing about this site is the face recognition technology which it uses to point out the person the video is all about. Really nice.
- Docjax
Docjax is a comprehensive document search engine which helps you to search documents in doc, pdf, xls and ppt format and uses Google and Yahoo in the background to show the results. You can also preview the document before you decide to download it.
- Yahoo Glue
Yahoo Glue is similar to Kosmix and displays results from various services on one page. Yahoo search users might want to try this out instead of the old Yahoo interface.
- Pipl
Pipl is the best people search engine on the web. If you are searching for someone on the internet then this is the site that could help you the most. It searches deep into the web to unearth every relevant information which mentions the name of that person. Once you try it, I’m sure you’d agree that it is really impressive.
- Search.io
Search.io is a tabbed search interface and can display almost every kind of search engine available in different tabs on the same page. Hence this is another tool which could prove useful if you’d like to widen your search beyond Google and take a look at what other search engines have to offer on the same query.
- Freshbargains
Freshbargains, as the name suggests, lets you hunt for bargains on the web. It aggregates deals from around 15 sites which are known for the great deals they offer. It can also alert you through email when a new deal is available for your desired product.
- Dooblet
Dooblet helps you find alternatives for just about anything. And it’s not bad in doing that. I typed iPhone in the search box and the top two results were iPod touch and blackberry. Both are relevant in some or the other way as an alternative to iPhone.
- Tagoo
Tagoo is a media search engine which lets you search and play audio and video content. You can also create playlists and interact with other users of this site.
Cheers,
Abhijeet
 | Written on 3/16/2009 by Abhijeet Mukherjee. Abhijeet is an internet entrepreneur who loves writing about tech, productivity, blogging & making money online. Catch him at Jeet Blog and also subscribe to his weekly newsletter. | Photo Credit: Yodel Anecdotal |
