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Searching is one of the core utilities of the internet. Most websites today have a search function, and we all spend a lot of time searching. On Google, for example, 34,000 searches occur each second. For many internet users, Google has become the default search engine in web browsers and mobile devices; however, Google isn’t always the best search engine for the job. When Google isn’t getting the job done, give one of these other search engines a chance. For the marketers reading this post, though Google has the majority of the search engine market share it isn’t the only option for paid and organic search engine marketing.
9 Awesome Search Engines That Aren’t Named Google
1. Hunch - The reason we search is because we don't know the answer to a question. Hunch is a recommendation search engine that helps users get recommendations about almost anything including books, movies, cars, software, clothing, and many other types of choices. Hunch provides recommendations by asking users a series of questions related to their current search term. Following the list of questions, the user is given a recommendation. Hunch easily may be the most addictive search engine on the web. Think about Hunch as a personalized search engine that is about recommendations instead of only results. It can even tell you if you should buy HubSpot!
2. Yelp - Remember that thick yellow book that used to magically appear on your door step? The Yellow Pages is dead, and Yelp is one of the services that helped kill it. Yelp is a local search engine and social network that allows searchers to discover and review local businesses. Yelp has become a popular tool for discovering successful restaurants, hotels, service providers, and much more in a local area and will even let searchers filters by their physical distance from each result in their search.
3. Flickr - Google is great at searching many things, but it is still working on making its image search the best in the world. If you are looking for images, your best option is to check out Flickr, owned by Yahoo. Flickr is a thriving social network and search engine based on images.
4. Searchtastic - Most Twitter users are likely familiar with
Seach.Twitter.com as a method for searching and discovering tweets. The problem is that Twitter Search has some limitations including only search 7 days' worth of search history and not providing a way to easily export the tweets discovered while searching. Searchtastic solves both of these problems. Users can search tweets from months back instead of just one week and can then export search results to Excel for reporting or data mining. If you are a marketer using Twitter, Searchtastic is worth checking out.
5. Collecta - We recently posted about
Google's new real-time search results page, but Collecta is a search engine startup that has been making a lot of noise in the real-time search industry. Collecta pulls in results for a search term in real time and continues to add them to the results page as they are published across the web. Collecta also lets users filter by content type.
6. ClipBlast -
YouTube is the king of video as well as video search. The problem is that YouTube search only delivers videos uploaded to YouTube. While the majority of online videos reside on YouTube, there is still a lot of content posted to other services. ClipBlast solves this problem by searching videos across video sharing sites, including YouTube, and then displaying them as thumbnails on the search results page.
7. Pipl - Sure, people search for themselves on Google, but the search engine really isn't designed to provide people-focused results. Enter Pipl, an interesting and sometimes creepy search engine that will let you find out more than you likely wanted to know about someone. Pipl gathers images, social profiles, business information, email, and many other types of information with just one click.
8. Simply Hired - Many of the search engines in this post and many more not mentioned are known as vertical search engines. These search engines focus on finding and displaying one specific type of content or subject. A prime example of a great vertical search engine is Simply Hired. This job search engine pulls in job listings from across the web from a variety of different sources, making it simple to find job listings or track competitor job openings.
9. WolframAlpha - Ever wanted to get a little nerdy with your searching? If you like numbers and computations, then WolframAlpha is the search engine for you. This search engine allows users to execute formulas, provide statistical data to search, as well as much more.
What are your favorite search engines other than Google?
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