My ambition here is to give you a broad overview of available search engines types today, with a selection of the most popular ones for each category. For advices and knowledge on search engin optimization (SEO) or search engine marketing (SEM), i suggest you should contact Simon Sundén eller Jesper Åström, both of the Stockholm-based agency Honesty.
The number between brackets after the site’s address is its popularity ranking according to Alexa, as of January 2010. Now, here is the list:
GENERALIST SEARCH ENGINES
google.com (1)
Google primarily provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of tools and platforms including popular products like Gmail, Alerts, Analytics, Translate, Maps & Earth. Most of its web-based products are free, Google focusing on online advertising through its AdWords and AdSense platforms to generate income. Google has also made strong moves into the web-based apps space with acquisitions including YouTube, DoubleClick, Feedburner, Orkut, Picasa, Blogger, Jaiku, Panoramio and Jotspot (now Google Sites). Google also develops its own products, like the browser Chrome or the communication and collaboration platform Wave. Google owns the Android mobile phone platform.
yahoo.com (3)
Yahoo! Inc. (Yahoo!), incorporated in 1995, is a global Internet brand. Its best known products are its web portal Yahoo!, its search engine Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Mail, the RSS mashup visual editor Yahoo! Pipes, Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo! Personal.
Yahoo! also owns many popular websites, such as Flickr, Delicious, Upcoming, MyBlogLog or Zimbra.
bing.com (21)
Bing is a search engine from Microsoft officially released on June 3, 2009. It combines technology from the Farecast and Powerset acquisitions, as well as new algorithms and a more colorful page design, to attempt to understand the context behind the search, which Microsoft claims gives users better results. In addition to its tool for searching web pages, Bing also provides diverse search offerings, such as Images, News, Local, Maps, travel, Videos, Visual search, Twitter search, etc.
ask.com (55)
Ask.com is a search engine founded in 1996, actually ranking #4 behind Google, Yahoo and Bing. It was originally known as Ask Jeeves, where “Jeeves” is the name of the “gentleman’s personal gentleman”, or valet, fetching answers to any question asked. The original idea behind Ask Jeeves was to allow users to get answers to questions posed in everyday, natural language. It supports a variety of user queries in plain English, as well as traditional keyword searching.
a9.com (6783)
Amazon’s service A9 makes use of various search engines for specific uses. OpenSearch and can be viewed as a search federator. Product search is the search engine driving the shopping experience for Amazon.com and its partners. Clickriver is Amazon’s answer to Google’s AdWords.
cuil.com (12317)
Cuil is a stealth search engine startup which claims that it can index web pages significantly faster and cheaper than Google. Cuill has told potential investors that their indexing costs will be 1/10th of Google’s, based on new search architectures and relevance methods.
others: whatseek.com (1482), primosearch.com (4492), gigablast.com (28669), zuula.com (27349), duckduckgo.com (49402), hakia.com(61162), yauba.com (148417), yebol.com (121301), faroo.com (204455), …
META SEARCH ENGINE
A meta-search engine is a search tool that sends user requests to several other search engines and/or databases and aggregates the results into a single list or displays them according to their source. Metasearch engines enable users to enter search criteria once and access several search engines simultaneously. Metasearch engines operate on the premise that the web is too large for any one search engine to index it all and that more comprehensive search results can be obtained by combining the results from several search engines. This also may save the user from having to use multiple search engines separately.
dogpile.com (2043)
Dogpile is a Metasearch engine, returning all the best results from leading search engines including Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Ask, as well as authority sites Kosmix and Fandango.
ezanga.com (8029)
eZanga’s proprietary technologies push the limit of Meta search by retrieving search results from multiple search engines, then re-ranking and displaying the most relevant results without duplication.
leapfish.com (10523)
Leapfish is a multi-dimensional information aggregator and search portal in the world that seeks to gather, organize and render the most relevant information from the internet’s most valuable destinations for each users search, in one single simple shot.
scour.com (11783)
Scour is a social search engine that “scours” multiple other search engines, with the goal of offering the most relevant search results. This is achieved through a combination of proven search algorithms and real user feedback. Scour also incentivises users to interact with points redeemable for Visa gift cards. It recently incorporated results from Twitter and OneRiot, making it a real time discovery engine as well, and further benefiting the engines result capability
clusty.com (18691)
This search tool from Vivísimo offers clustered results for a selection of searches. Metasearch the whole web, or use tabs to search for news, gossip, images, or products. Options to search Wikipedia, blogs and Slashdot.
mamma.com (44998)
Mamma is a “smart” metasearch engine – using multiple search engines, all at the same time. Founded in 1996, its one of the first and still one of the most popular search engines on the web today.
HUMAN SEARCH ENGINE
A human search engine is a search engine that uses human participation to filter the search results and assist users in clarifying their search request. The goal is to provide users with a limited number of relevant results, as opposed to traditional search engines that often return a large number of results that may or may not be relevant.
dmoz.org (695)
aka Open Directory Project, Searchable people-reviewed web directory categorized by language, subject and location. Edited and run by volunteers, supported by AOL. 80 languages.
mahalo.com (1079)
Mahalo.com is a human-powered search engine (web directory) launched in public beta in october 2007. Mahalo now offers other services as Mahalo Answer (community generated question & answers), Mahalo How To (instructional Q & A), Mahalo Tasks (allowing community members to help improve Mahalo’s site in exchange for payment in ”Mahalo Dollars”). Mahalo means “thank you” in Hawaiian.
chacha.com (1506)
ChaCha mobile search uses paid human guides to answer questions sent via SMS text message in conversational English. The service matches queries by sending them to the most knowledgeable guides in that topic, who then answer back via text message. The mobile search model is now used for ChaCha’s desktop queries as well, whereas ChaCha’s original model used human guides to search with users in a chat-like session. The previous model was discontinued in favor of the universal mobile search model in April 2008.
webworldindex.com (14900)
An established web directory of quality web sites organized by topic, offering free and premium business listings. Suggest your site for possible inclusion.
sproose.com (150483)
Sproose is a user powered search engine that allows users to contribute to the ranking of web pages by voting for pages they find useful. Sproose also enables users to browse pages that have been voted and/or tagged by other users making it easy to discover new and interesting pages in a social network environment.
REAL TIME SEARCH
Real-time web is the concept of searching for and finding information online as it is produced. Advancements in web search technology coupled with growing use of social media enable online activities to be queried as they occur.
A traditional web search crawls and indexes web pages periodically, returning results based on relevance to the search query. The real time web delivers the most popular topics recently discussed or posted by users. The content is often “soft” in that it is based on the social web – people’s opinions, attitudes, thoughts and interests – as opposed to hard news or facts.
tweetmeme.com (584)
Tweetmeme is a combination of Techmeme and a standard Twitter aggregator. The site monitors Twitter tweets for links and determines which ones are becoming popular, then posts them on a constantly updated page.
topsy.com (3277)
Topsy, which launched on May 26, 2009, is a real-time search engine, with a focus on social media sites like Twitter. The site’s underlying technology examines popular links as well as the influence of each person citing a link. Topsy augments traditional search engines by finding information that people are talking about.
oneriot.com (15563)
OneRiot, a realtime search engine, helps users find the news, blogs and videos that people are buzzing about. Using PulseRank, a realtime ranking algorithm, OneRiot delivers search results as they emerge, ordered to reflect current social relevance. By indexing pages shared by Digg, Twitter, and wider social web users – including the contributions of OneRiot’s own three million-strong panel – OneRiot realtime results answer the question: what is happening right now?
socialmention.com (22589)
Social Mention is a social media search platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information. It allows users to easily track what people are saying about them, their company, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 80+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc. Social Mention currently provides a point-in-time social media search and analysis service, daily social media alerts, and a third-party API.
feedmil.com (32184)
Feedmil is a real-time feed search engine featuring a spam-free, topic-focused search for a variety of live streams from blogs, microblogs, podcasts, as well as public and social media.
whostalkin.com (64853)
WhosTalkin is a social media search tool that allows users to search for conversations by topics, combining data taken from over 60 of the internet’s most popular social media gateways.
collecta.com (71000)
Collecta monitors the update streams of popular realtime blogs and sites like Twitter, Wordpress, and Flickr, and shows results as they happen. Results can be filtered by status updates, comments, stories, or photos. The entire engine is built around the XMPP standard, which pushes out data on a continual basis, so that for every search you end up watching a stream that keeps updating itself.
others: samepoint.com (75097), crowdeye.com (75764), scoopler.com (93981), faroo.com (204455), nibbo.com (254102), itpints.com (995532)
BLOG SEARCH
blogcatalog.com (316)
BlogCatalog is a blogger only social network and blog directory. The site’s purpose is to help bloggers connect, share ideas, and grow through group and general discussions. It also provides a variety of tools, features, and widgets to help bloggers.
technorati.com (914)
Technorati is an engine for searching blogs. It has an active software developer community, many of them from open-source culture. Technorati looks at tags that authors have placed on their websites, which help categorize search results, with recent results coming first. Technorati also provides popularity indexes.
icerocket.com (6663)
Blog search engine IceRocket also provides a Trend Tool, Search API for commercial blogs and a Blog Tracker service.
blogpulse.com (22942)
BlogPulse is an automated trend discovery system for blogs. BlogPulse applies machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to search in the highly dynamic world of blogs. BlogPulse is owned by Nielsen.
twingly.com (23122 / 501)
Twingly (launched in February 2007) is a blog and microblog search engine. Beside search, Twingly channels aims at solving the problem of information overload (one of the primary concerns of real-time web enthusiasts) by filtering the flood of news. Twingly Blogstream is a moderated trackback function for large websites, providing measurably higher visitor engagement and greater attention in the blogosphere. Twingly was awarded as one of the top 10 international web products of 2009 by ReadWriteWeb.
blogarama.com (24154)
Lists weblogs by category. Users are invited to post reviews.
blogdigger.com (36224)
RSS search engine, providing full-text search, as well as metadata search on RSS information. It has link search funtionality, as well as searching by date, topic, title and other fields.
other: google blog search, scoutle.com (308020)
PEOPLE SEARCH
123people.com (2085)
123people is a real time people search tool used to find comprehensive and centralized people related information consisting of images, videos, phone numbers, email addresses, social networking, Wikipedia profiles, etc. Users can add information to every single search result, giving it more relevance.
zoominfo.com (2265)
A business information search engine, providing company search, people search and job search. It constructs profiles on people and companies, drawn from the Web, or created by individuals and companies for themselves.
pipl.com (2619)
Pipl is the most comprehensive people search on the web. Unlike a typical search-engine, Pipl is designed to retrieve information from the “deep web”, i-e searchable databases and extract facts, contact details and other relevant information from personal profiles, member directories, scientific publications, court records and numerous other sources.
others: addresses.com (2633), spock.com (7436), wink.com (18405), yoname.com (289436), snitch.name (826716)
VISUAL SEARCH ENGINES
viewzi.com (88718)
Viewzi is a flash-based visual search engine. it lets you visualize your search results in a dynamic way using different views to give a different experience altogether.
spezify.com (147340)
Spezify is a search engine that lets you visualize search results. It mixes all kinds of media such as text, videos, tweets, images from various sources (Yahoo, MSN, Amazon, Twitter, Ebay… etc ) and displays on a grid interface where you can scroll both vertically and horizontally to view them.
others: redz.com (39419), mugurdy.com (394828), spacetime.com (455950), oskope.com (677091), search-cube.com (689826)
QUESTION & ANSWERS
Community generated questions & answers.
answerbag.com (1359)
AnswerBag is a social network where people bring questions and find answers. The site is designed to encourage the sharing of knowledge an ideas.
formspring.me (1442)
With formspring.me, you can answer anonymous questions to your friends, embed a customized question box to your website, customize your Formspring profile page, follow your friends to ask them questions anonymously, publish your responses to your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Blogger accounts automatically. Login with only your Facebook account information.
blurtit.com (1658)
Free self moderated directory, Blurtit is both a community where people share interests and help each other and a fast-growing database for knowledge of all kinds.
vark.com (21844)
Aardvark is a tool that lets users tap into the knowledge and experience of friends and friends-of-friends. Send Aardvark a question (from the web, IM, email, Twitter, or iPhone) and you’ll get a quick, (hopefully) helpful response from someone with either the right knowledge and experience to help, similar tastes and/or friends in common
others:
askville, yahoo! answers, yedda.com (5281), fluther.com (18872), answerly.com (72671)
OTHER SEARCH ENGINES
omgili.com (2844)
Unlike ordinary search engines that prioritize articles and edited web pages, Omgili only indexes discussion forums. Omgili finds consumer opinions, debates, discussions, personal experiences, answers and solutions.
wolframalpha.com (4402)
Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine, but a ”computational knowledge engine”. It generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links. Wolfram Alpha’s vision is to create a system which can do for formal knowledge (heuristics, algorithms, rules, methods, theorems, etc.) what search engines have done for informal knowledge, such as text and documents.
kosmix.com (7945)
Kosmix is a guide to the Web, more than a search engine. Kosmix lets users search the most popular of topics in an easy to understand presentation, presenting a dashboard of relevant videos, photos, news, commentary, opinion, communities and links to related topics. Well suited for inexperienced web users, Kosmix is a good resource for the most basic of searches.
rollyo.com (31776)
Rollyo offers the ability to search the content of a list of specified websites, allowing you to narrow down the results to pages from websites that you already know and trust.
powerset.com (105714)
Microsoft-owned Powerset is a natural language search engine. In the search box, users can express themselves in keywords, phrases, or simple questions. Powerset is ”aiming to improve the way we find information by unlocking the meaning encoded in ordinary human language.”
goby.com (135050)
Goby is a deep web search engine which launched in September 2009. The site searches selected databases and other sources of information on the web focused on 400 categories of things to do while traveling. Signed in users may also share their results utilizing the Facebook connect api.
almost.at (892485)
Almost.at is a site that allows users to follow events in real time across Twitter, Flickr, and a variety of other online services. It also allows users to specify which Twitter members are actually at an event, rather than just talking about it.