Search Engine Alternatives

[Chris Sherman]

There's an old saw about a drunk who's searching for his lost car keys under a street lamp. A passerby asks him if that's where he lost them, and he replies "No, but the light is better here." All too often, when we automatically fire up our favorite search engine, we're doing the same thing. Quite often, we'll have better luck looking elsewhere.

Today's SearchDay article, Searching for Quick Answers To Odd Questions, covers covers a number of specialized resources that offer quick, reliable answers to questions that might take you hours to find using a search engine.

What other sites like these would you recommend for finding specialized types of information? And are these smaller, niche sites viable alternatives for some types of PPC campaigns?

I find www.snopes.com, the Urban Legends Reference Pages, to be invaluable in determining which (if any) of the emails friends forward to me are legitimate. (See the section titled "Inboxer Rebellion.") My guess is that it wouldn't be a viable alternative to a PPC campaign, although limited banner advertising is available.

[mcanerin]

I keep a small group of specialty search engines handy. I find these actually useful for research, as opposed to YAPFL sites (Yet Another Place For Links)

Scirius
The science search engine

Internet Archive (Wayback Machine)
An archive of historical websites - what did Yahoo look like 3 years ago?

FindLaw
a great resource for those seeking legal data (US - centric)

The Internet Movie Database
THE site for when you need any movie-related information. If you've never heard of it before, you've been living under a rock. Visit now.

Singingfish
is an unrivaled site for those seeking streaming audio or video files from across the web and extremely useful to those seeking this type of content.

FindArticles.com
provides access to an archive of articles from over 300 magazines stretching back to 1998.

eBizSearch
An experimental search engine focusing on academic and commercially produced articles and reports about e-Business

Search Systems Public Record Locator
A great resource for public records

Research Index (CiteSeer)
search engine focusing on computer science research and articles.

Ian

[kidmercury]

wow. awesome info, thanks.