Specialty Search Engines

[vangogh]

I found a list of 100+ specialty search engines (http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/100-alternative-search-engines-you-should-know/) you may find useful.

More and more I've been turning to specialty search engines to find specific things and going to the major search engines for more general queries. Google et al are great, but sometimes it takes a few too many searches to dig down to what you really want.

Things the engines in the link above will search for

PDFs
Audio Files
Video Files
Rapid Share

Have any specialty engines to share on the above or different topics

[KristineS]

Wow, I didn't even know most of these existed. They would be useful if you were looking for a specific thing. Thanks for posting the link. I'm going to have to check some of these search engines out.

[Spider]

I used to own two specialty search engines, through a company called - SearchKing - The Internet Community Builder (http://www.searchking.com/) (In fact, that's where I got the nickname 'Spider.')

I had SmallBiz and Scuba. Neither exist now but I see that SearchKing is still around. They should have lots of niche directories.

[vangogh]

Now we know where your nickname came from.

I never used to use specialty engines, but now that you can add search engines directly to your browser I do add the ones that have some use. As you might expect I search WordPress related things often. So I have things set to allow me to search the WP documentation, themes, plugins, etc.

The search in the browser thing is usually set to Google by default, but Google is not always the best place to find what I want.

[phanio]

Wow - did not know that there were so many - great information - what are your favorites (product the best results)?

[vangogh]

Most of these specialty engines were new to me and I haven't used them yet. I do have some other engines set in my browser. As many know I work with WordPress a lot so I have things set to directly search the WordPress documentation or look for themes and plugins. There are also a few search engines created to make searching for specific things within the documentation easier.

For more general things I have Wikipedia search set if I need some quick and shallow info. I have the IMDB search engine set to search for movies, etc.

Safari has become my default search engine lately and through a plugin for it I can add a search to any site I want. I just need to see how the search on that site is set up and then configure the plugin.

[billbenson]

Why Safari (other than the plugin mentioned above). I cut over to Linux about a month ago. I need to play around with software to see what I like. So why Safari over FF?

[vangogh]

FF started to get very slow for me. I realize it's most due to all the plugins I have installed, but without those plugins there isn't a compelling reason for me to use FF. Since I'm on a Mac now, Safari just looks more right. It does feel faster (it uses the webkit engine, the same as Google Chrome) to me and I like how Safari has gone most everyone a step further in css3 compliance.

I still need some FF plugins so I have both open all the time. Safari has become my main browser with FF used for plugin specific things. I've managed to find enough plugins for Safari to duplicate many of the FF plugins I had installed.

When Chrome comes out for Mac I'll be giving it a try.

Mostly it's the design. I have quite a few browsers installed as you might guess and after awhile they all start to seem the same in terms of basic functionality. They all claim to be the fastest too. FF 3.5 is supposed to fix some of the memory leaks and lag time (though I heard that with FF 3 too) and maybe I'll go back to using it more.

I wouldn't say there are a ton of reasons to choose Safari over FF. For me it's the design and what I perceive as a faster browser. You probably just want to download a few and try them out to see which you like best.

[KristineS]

FireFox has been bugging me lately. It might be time to try another browser. I've been warned against IE8. I know a few people who installed it and then uninstalled it because it screwed things up so much.

The other options would be Safari and Opera I guess. I have no compelling reason to choose one over the other. Any suggestions?

[vangogh]

I would use each for a day or two and see which you like better. Browser are becoming a choice based more on personal preference than anything else. As someone who develops websites I don't think I'll ever use IE, because of how much Microsoft ignores standards. IE isn't nearly as hard to develop for as some people make it out to be, but there's plenty of simple css that other browsers have done well for years that IE refuses to do in every upgrade.

Much of the advances we've seen in browsers over the years were probably first introduced by Opera, though it's never had much market share. My choice in Safari is the Mac design, which you won't see on Windows. Google Chrome is another choice. It's supposed to be the most secure browser, though you'll be giving yet more info to Google.

You can also try Flock, which uses the same Mozilla engine as FF to render pages, but it's geared toward social media use. Lot's of stuff built into the browser to connect and use various social sites and many FF plugins will work.

FF 3.5 is on the horizon and aims to fix a number of problems so you may also want to wait till it's available or at least come back to it once it's out.

[billbenson]

Microsoft is always going to be doing things differently to lock people into them. They are in the business of selling software. That means they will keep obsoleting stuff in any way they can to force you into upgrading. They aren't in the business of being standards compliant. The only benifit I see to any of MS's products is a one click install and a lot of other software manufacturers try to be compliant with MS for obvious reasons.

The above is why I switched to Linux. I think Apple would be a good choice as well. Apple is probably the best one click install out there. Linux is probably more versital and the price is right, but it has a much steeper learning curve. Plus there are almost to many options for software that you really need to test run to see what you like.

[vangogh]

What I like about Macs is that they do give you the aesthetic design on top, but it's still *nix under the hood. You have the command line to access FreeBSD if you want, but also have the nice friendly OS interface on top.

I won't tell you Mac is perfect, but having used both Mac and Windows I don't see myself going back to Windows.

[royhunters]

I remember when Kartoo was live, that was an interesting one. I think now they only sell it to closed networks, I have not tried to find it for awhile but it seemed to be really good at relationship mapping.

[vangogh]

I'm not familiar with Kartoo. What kind of search engine was it or is it? What kind of vertical did they specialize in?

[royhunters]

It was a french one, only in english, if you do a search for them you will find them. I looked for them after I made the post and they still have a live search engine.

They are an interface mapping metasearch engine. My results show more than just one page of my website.

It's a really trippy one.

Go to KartOO : The First Interface Mapping Metasearch Engine (http://www.kartoo.com)

My company came up as #2... I really like them now!!!!!

[royhunters]

Click the options tab and look at all the stuff you can do with it, you can turn sponsored results OFF, it's really really cool!

[vangogh]

Interesting site. I can't say I've seen a flash based search engine before, but it does look like a nice site.