PANDIA suggests using directories first, then moving on to search engines. Its listing of “all the best search engines” lists both search engines and major directories. (You will not see the Google directories on the list, because Google bases its directories on the Open Directory, which is listed.)

http://pandia.com/powersearch/index.html

SECRETS OF THE “INVISIBLE WEB”

     ROBERT LACKIE says there’s an “invisible web” you can search when you have a particularly broad or narrow topic, OR want selected, evaluated, and annotated collections, OR prefer quality over quantity. You’ll find a good deal of this information on PANDIA.COM, but it seems to me that LACKIE lists some things that PANDIA doesn’t.

http://www.robertlackie.com/invisible/index.html

SEARCHING THROUGH THE SOCIAL SITES

     In item 2, MARC and ANGEL tell you how to find free stuff through the social sites – without running into the spam that the word free elicits on Google. In fact, you can use the social sites to come up with the best items in many areas, not just free items. I had heard that you could do this, and am grateful to MARC and ANGEL for telling us how.

http://www.marcandangel.com/2007/07/25/7-clever-google-tricks-worth-knowing/

     YOONO is also a mixture of search and social site. If you come up with a good page on any topic, YOONO “will automatically show you matching sites and people interested in the same topic.” You can then proceed to socialize . . . or not. As you wish.

http://www.yoono.com/index.jsp

BETTER SEARCH WITH CLUSTY.COM

     You know how Google serves a ton of information in a semi-disorganized mass? CLUSTY takes a different approach. They say, “Clusty queries several top search engines, combines the results, and generates an ordered list based on comparative ranking. This "metasearch" approach helps raise the best results to the top and push search engine spam to the bottom. But what really makes Clusty unique is what happens after you search. Instead of delivering millions of search results in one long list, our search engine groups similar results together into clusters.”

http://clusty.com/

A LIST OF BLOG SEARCH ENGINES

     ARI PAPARO gives an extensive list of blog search engines, plus addresses where people can submit their own blogs to the engines.

http://www.aripaparo.com/archive/000632.html

BEST-KNOWN BLOG SEARCH ENGINE

     TECHNORATI gives you fun snippets on the subject of your search, gives you immediate blog coverage, and helps you find blogs you’d never otherwise scan.

http://technorati.com/

SEARCH ENGINES THAT ANSWER QUESTIONS

     While Google knows absolutely everything, it doesn’t respond very well to being asked questions. Here are two search engines that think they can do better:

http://www.answers.com/bb/

http://www.hakia.com/

BETTER SEARCH WITH BETTER SEARCH

     If you use Firefox as a browser, you can get BETTER SEARCH as an extension. Take a look at what it does:

http://bettersearch.zottmann.org/

INTERNET SEARCH ON STEROIDS

     If your search problem should be too few search results rather than too many, put your search item into CRAIGBALL’s Google search box, and get 20 major search engines going. Gives “research” a whole new dimension.

http://www.craigball.com/searchcentral.html

SEARCH ENGINE COLOSSUS

     This site lists search engines from many countries. And not only countries. I note, for instance, that the search engine listings for Denmark are in “Dansk.” The listings for India are not only in English, but in Punjabi, Hindi, Bengali, and many other languages.

http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/