The Top 2 Google Alternatives

By: Karan Goel | 19th February 2010

Google has been the leading search engine for as long as I can remember. Launched as a small beta start up in 1996 at the domain google.stanford.edu using inexpensive hardware, you wouldn’t think then that it would ever become the success it is today with so few useful Google alternatives available.

If you want to shed that mentality of instantly “Googling it” then you’ve got to take the leap, here are five excellent Google alternatives – each one has their own specific goals and a different way of doing things; and no, they’re not Bing, Yahoo! or Wolfram Alpha.

FactBites

Normally, when you search for something on Google, or any of the big search engines for that matter you’re returned results based on the popularity of the page. That’s because search engines link relevance with popularity. FactBites however draws on the web’s vast amount of encyclopedias and information websites such as Wikipedia and more specialised ones to provide you with factual information.

This search engine is great for things such as school work and research for articles or other such works. To put it bluntly, it cuts off all the excess fat that you don’t need and gives you the best of the best.

Quintura

This search engine I liked a lot because it redefines how search results should be displayed. Instead of just showing you a list descending in order of relevance, they have this accompanied by a tag cloud to the left of the screen. This allows you to quickly display alternative results by just hovering your mouse over them. This tag cloud can also be shared or embedded using the appropriate buttons.

Do you have any suggestions for other alternative search engines? What do you think of the ones listed?