(1) Alternative Algorithm & Interface

Mooter
Mooter organizes each search in clusters of relevant categories, so that you can further dive into specific topics to find specific results. Of course you can see all the results anytime. Nice concept, but seems like the service has not been updated since 2005.

Mahalo
Mahalo claims to be the world’s first human-powered search engine. Organized, comprehensive, spam (but not ad) free. I like it for the sidebar on the right, which contains a lot of information relevant to the search term, such as fast facts and quotes. The rest of the results are pre-sorted into Top 7 links, news, basics and other relevant topics. It looks neat and it’s very thorough and clear. Mahalo (Hawaiian for “thank you”).

Searchme
From all the search engines I have seen, searchme definitely is the most unique and impressive one (Renee also looked at it here). Instead of showing a list of links with short excerpts of the text on the site, it displays a whole page preview for each result and the user can scroll through the pages in a 3D animated interface. The search terms are highlighted within the preview and on top there are a list of possible categories to click for more specific results. A site heavy on system resources, but absolutely beautiful and useful!

(2) Compare & Combine

WebCrawler
WebCrawler searches the web’s top four search engines simultaneously. They are Google, Yahoo!Search, LiveSearch, and Ask. Unfortunately, you only see a mashup of the different results, and if you find the results of say Yahoo annoying, you can’t exclude them.

MalaMata
MalaMata is a customizable search engine, so you can tell it which of up to four different search engines it should query. The results are displayed all at once in four separate sub-windows, but you can focus on and switch between them easily.

Katapulco
Very simple, but potentially very useful search engine that lets you query various pages, for example regional Google versions, recipes or shopping sites, simply by entering a letter key (shortcut) behind the search field. All shortcuts are listed for easy reference. The full list contains over 70 search engines and user suggestions are possible and welcome.

ATUNN
Futuristic yet simple interface. From the interactive menu above the search field you can select a category and eventually define a specific search engine, although I wonder why the video search doesn’t offer YouTube as an option. The music category is very cool. It redirects you to a new page where you can browse music by major categories like genre, year, nation, mood, and more. From there you can go into various sub-categories. The music comes via Last.fm Radio. Back to the main page, there is a text menu on top of the page with several categories like Mail, Music and SocialNetwork which open a list of links when you click on them. Quite a nice selection of shortcuts.

Sputtr
From this category, Sputtr is my design über favorite. I love the interface, it’s very well done, and I will definitely use Sputtr on a regular basis in the future. It’s a fully customizable search homepage – your search, your way. So how it works is that you enter your search term in the search field. So far, so regular. To query a specific search engine, instead of hitting enter, click the respective symbol in the list. That’s very cool. And to add even more search engines, customize the page and choose from a comprehensive list. If you find your favorite search engine is missing, simply submit it. Drag&Drop allows you to rearrange icons and in case you don’t like one of them, you are free to remove it altogether. To save your layout, you have to create an account, and I recommend it!

(3) File, Site & Topic Specific Search

PDF Search Engine
A PDF or eBook search engine. It does what it says. Simple and straight forward.

ICONlook
An icon search engine. If results are plenty, it makes sense to filter by size. Again, simple and straight forward. Nice interface, too.

loadEvery
I wasn’t quite sure where to put this search engine. At a first glance the interface isn’t very appealing, but it’s functional and that’s what counts. So this is a search engine for files with the option to search specific, suggested pages. The music search for example allows you to query Skreemr and goear among others.

FindSounds
A sound search engine for AIFF, AU, MP3, and WAVE files matching different options such as mono or stereo, minimum resolution, minimum sample rate and maximum file size.

Listen77 & Songza
Both are search engines exclusively for music in the form of mp3’s. Songs cannot be downloaded easily, instead there’s an on-site player which works nicely for both, although Songza is much more pretty. However, despite over a million songs in the database for Listen77 and an undoubtedly popular Songza, both rarely returned more than 50 songs, even for well established artists. Great concepts, but require serious attention, especially filling the music collection.

Deligio
Deligio should be your first stop when looking for software. Here you’ll be able to discover and share applications for all major operating systems, as indicated by respective symbols next to each search result. Users can rate results and submit software not yet indexed. Clean, simple, useful, it’s as easy as that.

Retrevo
Matching people and electronics. What a neat idea, where’s my PDA, can I print it? No seriously, this search engine is intended for finding product reviews, manuals or more general recommendations. Say you’re looking for a new camera, the result page will list all available models and you can narrow the search down by defining a price range, brands or specific features, and then look at the individual models that remain. I will definitely look at this one when I’m in need of a new digital device, maybe a PDA, finally.

Tag Galaxy
Tag Galaxy basically works like Mooter, organizing results in categories, but its 3D planet interface is much more beautiful and the search engine is dedicated to Flickr images. The site is a 2008 diploma thesis project of Steven Wood from the Georg-Simon-Ohm University of Applied Sciences in Nuremburg, Germany.

Powerset
Your search engine for Wikipedia articles.

Word & Biiible
If you ever again have a serious religous discussion, these ones may come in handy. Search the complete text of the Qur’an, New Testament, Tanakh, and Upanishads with Word or just the Bible with Biiible. The latter also features a Verse of the Day. Unusual? Yes! Useful? Maybe. Maybe not.

How to get rid of…
This could as well go into the fun section, but it’s serious and not as silly as it may sound. The source for results is Yahoo! Answers. It really only works for the terms in the A-Z list. Searching How-To-Get-Rid-Of.Info for bug, stain, or hilary clinton didn’t yield a single result.

Topicle
A search engine community to search only handpicked URLs, rather than the whole world wide web. Every user can add links, create a new, custom Topicle, and rate existing ones. Popular Topicles include Online Shopping, IPhone Applications, and Digital Camera Reviews. The site does not require a signup.

(4) Eco Friendly Search

Greenback Search
Saving the environment one search at a time, powered by Yahoo. But how does it work? Greenback Search uses its revenues to purchase carbon offsets from CarbonFun.org. I support the notion, but I remain a skeptic.

Ecocho
You search. They grow trees. They promise to grow 2 trees for every 1,000 searches made. As I look at it 4906 trees have been planted, which equals the recycling of over 5 million Lbs of CO2. I suppose that’s an estimate of saved carbon for the lifetime of the roughly 5000 trees. So it’s not much per year I guess. Meaning you have to use it more! This site is powered by Yahoo as well.

Friends Green
This search engine will save the rainforest. So far 607,000 sq ft have been saved. Again it’s Yahoo technology behind the search results.

Blackle
And finally, the infamous Blackle, claiming to use less energy, by using black instead of white background. But it only works effectively on CRT monitors, the energy saved with LCDs is minimal. At least this one is based on Google.

(5) Fun

Doogle
The Feckin’ Search Engine of Ireland.

FunnyLogo
Google search with a unique logo. I’m sure you’ve seen it before. With this one you can also change the font style.

ShoeZam!
The Shoe Search Engine. For all your Manolo Blahnik needs, and just in time for the Sex & the City movie.

Where’s the Milk
As farmers in Germany dispose their milk on their fields to put pressure on the industry and customers, this search engine hits a nerve.

And here we are, The End. Ideas? Suggestions? Comments?

*Oh yes, seriously! Compared to what is out there, this list is small!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Yahoo Searchmonkey Expands with Playable Music Tracks (3)
• Welcome To The Future Of Online Search (5)
• Master the Google Operands – Search Like a God & Save Time (41)
• Bing: The Next Big Thing From Microsoft (18)
• A Quick Guide To Google’s New Search Features (15)

And now think again. How realistic is that? How many sentences and files do you put online on an average day? Does that put Google’s name choice into perspective? Google is said to be named after the number googol, i.e. 10¹⁰⁰, a one followed by 100 zeros. It’s funny how back then they obviously didn’t care about the correct spelling, and today the verb google is found in many contemporary dictionaries.

Either way, it’s hard to imagine how much information is out there, yet a lot of it is at your fingertips. You just have to search right. Here are some tips to optimize and streamline your Google searches, and furthermore a handful of tricks that will save you time.

(1) Fine Tune

Operators are functional words or signs that tell the search engine how to connect or separate the given search terms. The most important ones are…

• AND or +
  With “AND” or “+” you can link words, so all linked terms are included in the search results. I’m adding this to give a complete collection. Google automatically searches for all given terms.
  Example: sun AND moon or sun +moon
  Note the “AND” must be in caps and there is no space after the “+”.
• OR or |
  Use these to search for either term.
  Example: sun OR moon or sun | moon
  Note that again “OR” must be in caps, but in this case there is a space after the “|”.
• ” “
  Putting terms in a quote indicates a sentence and will be searched for exactly in this composition.
  Example: “the sun lights up the moon”
• -
  The minus indicates that the following word or quoted set or words will be excluded from the search results.
  Example: sun -moon or sun -”moon and stars”
  Note that there is no space after the “-”
• *
  This is the so called wildcard. The asterisk represents a missing word, use it to let Google fill in any potential word.
  Example: “the * lights up the moon”
• ~
  To search for all synonyms of a word, put a tilde directly infront of it.
  Example: ~sun
  This search will bring back results containing the terms sun, solaris, solar, and a couple less obvious ones.
• ..
  The double dot put directly between two numbers denotes a range to narrow the results down.
  Example: “solar eclipse 1990..2005″
  Note that there are no spaces between the numbers or the dots.
• Advanced Search
  If you have a hard time remembering all of these operators, use Google’s Advanced Search .

(2) Narrow Down

Let Google do a search for more specific content. Google will exclude vast parts of information and dig deeper, if you tell it where to look or what to look for. And these are the operators you will need to know for that purpose:

• site:
  Search a specific site only. Very useful if that page doesn’t provide an in-site search.
  Example: site:makeuseof.com “Master the Google”
• cache:
  A clever operator to use if you suppose a page has changed or if it’s not currently available. Search for cached site versions within the Google Cache.
  Example: cache:http://www.makeuseof.com
• inurl: _ intitle: _ intext: _ inanchor:
  Those will search terms within any URL, title, text or anchor text, respectively. You can define several terms and combine with any other operator. If you add an “all” infront of either of these operators, all given terms have to appear in the respective query.
  Example: intext:makeuseof.com google -maps OR allintext:makeuseof google maps
  Note that these are not the same as the site: operator. The in… operators will search all sites containing the given terms.
• link:
  This one will find pages that link to a given URL.
  Example: link:makeuseof.com
• define:
  The smart way to search for definitions across the web.
  Example: define:Googol
• related:
  Let’s say you love MUO and would like to find related pages, try this operator!
  Example: related:http://www.makeuseof.com
• info:
  Get all the information Google has on a specific website in one search. That is links to Google Cache, similar pages, and more.
  Example: info:makeuseof.com
• filetype:
  Quite obviously a way to search only for one type of file. Works with pdf, ppt and doc.
  Example: filetype:pdf “Sun and Moon”
• music:
  A search with this operator will bring back artist, album and song information. The results are not always complete, so be careful.
  Example: music:tina turner
• movies:
  The search for movie reviews.
  Example: movie:indiana jones
• Q&A
  Google Q&A applies an AI engine to find answers to simple questions.
  Example: What is the population of China?

(3) Do the Math

Google can calculate.

• + _ – _ * _ /
  For simple equations use the symbols for plus, minus, multiply, and divert respectively. Use (brackets) to define which calculations shall be done first, else the simple rule multiplication and division before addition and subtraction applies.
  Example: (10 + 4) /2 *7 = 49 OR 10 + 4 /2 *7 = 24
• % of
  Example: 51% of 900 = 459
• ^ OR **
  These operators will raise a number to the power of another.
  Example: 5^3 will raise 5 to the 3rd power.
• And more…
  Without further ado, here’s an in-depth selection for the math junkie in you:
  sqrt() or square root of
  sin() cos() tan()
  ln logarithm base e
  log logarithm base 10
  lg logarithm base 2
  ! factorial

(4) Convert & Conquer

Google can do painful conversion for you, for example from degrees Fahrenheit to degrees Celsius. It can also answer really mundane questions such as what is the time in Sydney. Just type your question in plain English and Numbers, and Google will most likely give you a smart answer.

• currencies
  Example: 100 Euro in USD
• weight, length, volume, etc.
  Example: 100kg in lb
• time
  Example: time sydney
• weather
  Example: weather berlin

And finally, I know you’ve been waiting for that one for all of your life…..

(5) the answer to life, the universe, and everything

Google can give THE answer and a lot more.

There are a few things to remember. For one, Google can do a lot more than what is listed above, these are just the most important, interesting and simple tips & tricks to remember. Then keep in mind that Google isn’t the same everywhere. Depending on where you live, Google might send you to country specific Google sub-sites, which may return varying results. The most prominent example is censorship in countries like China.

If you’re logged into Google, it can keep a record of your searches, which can come in handy at times. If you wish to enable your Google History, go to your account, click on Web History and follow the indicated steps. This requires the Google Toolbar to be installed. However, I generally recommend to keep this feature turned off.

Which other Google tips & tricks do you find important? The comments are open for suggestions!

(By) This post was written by one of our regular authors, Tina from Recommended.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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• A Quick Guide To Google’s New Search Features (15)
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