Life Without Google
Google is not the only search engine on the block. Although it is extremely powerful, there are still some gaps in the almighty Google.
In this article, I’m going to introduce you to some unique alternatives that will help you fill in the gaps.
Clusty is one of my favorite search engine alternatives. Clusty is a meta search engine, which means that it combines search results from a variety of different sources.
Clusty puts you in command of your own search experience. According to the website, “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.”
I have found Clusty to be one of the best search experiences I have ever had. Their results are always right on target.
In addition, Clusty provides a very unique feature called clusters. After you enter your search term, instead of overwhelming you with millions of search results in one long list, Clust groups similar results together into clusters. These clusters help you to zero in on exactly the information you are looking for.
For example, whenever I entered the term “personal growth”, it returned some of the following clusters:
Self-help Tools for Personal Growth Goal Setting Books Motivation Quotations Success Creativity Conscious Living
If you are looking to search beyond the Web, Clusty also allows you to search for news, images, Wikipedia, blogs, jobs, and more. Simply click on the various links above the search box.
Try out this powerful search engine for yourself at Clusty.com
If you’re looking for the ultimate recipe search engine, then FoodieView is for you.
This search engine allows you to search over 1 million recipes from a number of different sources, including The Food Network, AllRecipes.com, Martha Stewart Recipes, Epicurious and many more.
You can search by ingredients, dish, chef, or couisine. You can search for famous recipes by Bobby Flay, Paula Deen, or Rachel Ray. Search for breakfast recipes, appetizers, salads, soups, and beverages. Looking for healthy alternatives, you can also search for low calorie, low carb, low fat, and vegetarian meals.
Looking for something original, check out the category page
Here you can find a wide variety of cousines, including Egyptian, Cajun, Hawaiian, Chinese, Indian, Italian, Greek, German, Spanish, Mexican, and many more. Surprise your family with Italy’s famous lasagna without having to travel half way across the world.
Find the perfect meal at FoodieView.
You may be familiar with YouTube and Google Video, but have you heard of Blinx. Blinx is by far the world’s largest and most advanced video search engine.
In fact, they have over 12 million hours of searchable video. What makes them unique is that Blinx actually searches the “content” of the video instead of just the title and description.
So you could actually type in famous movie quotes or the lyrics to a song to find content.
To find out more about the incredible technology behind Blinx, go to http://www.blinkx.com/about?type=Technology.
Del.icio.us is an excellent web site that will help you to find some of the best sites from around the Web. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that allows you to store, share, and discover web bookmarks.
All of your bookmarks are tagged with descriptive labels for quick reference in the future.
Delicious also makes for a great search engine because you are able to search for keyword tags across the entire network of users.
For example, to view bookmarks tagged with a specific keyword, type in:
http://del.icio.us/tag/keyword
To view bookmarks tagged with two or more keywords, type in:
http://del.icio.us/tag/keyword+keyword
So for example, if you wanted to look for sites about pwersonal growth, you would type in:
http://del.icio.us/tag/personal+growth
If you are looking for the most popular sites in a particular category, then you simply type in:
http://del.icio.us/popular/TAGNAME
An example might be http://del.icio.us/popular/GTD
This would find the most popular sites related to “Getting Things Done”.
If you wanted to subscribe to this page through RSS, then simply type in:
http://del.icio.us/rss/popular/GTD
Play around a bit and you will find a ton of uses for Del.icio.us.
You can also read my article on Delicious over at Lifehack.org entitled, “Top 10 Ways to Use Delicious”
What to find a great book? WhatShouldIReadNext.com will help you do it. Simply enter a book you like into the search box and they will find other books that you might like as well.
Very Cool!! Check it out at WhatShouldIReadNext.com.