Are you looking for a long-lost friend or an ex-colleague? Perhaps you're trying to catch up with the weirdest trends on social media? If so, you'll need a way to search social networks.

Of course, most social networks have their own search engines built in, but they're fundamentally limited by the fact they can only search their own database. And how you are supposed to know whether Aunt Mary is on Facebook, Twitter, or one of the other myriad options?

The solution? Use a network-agnostic social search engine. They can search all of the most common networks, as well as lots of the niche, smaller ones.

1. Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics is a great social media search engine for businesses that need to discover trending topics across a number of platforms.

You will be able to dig into data about your brand, the keywords you want to target, and your competitors.

After performing a search, you will be able to get a complete breakdown of your top influencers, your mentions, and the wider industry social media data.

The main clients Mentionlytics is targeting are startups, SMEs, enterprises, public figures, and PR agencies. This is not a social media search engine for personal use.

Pricing starts at $39/month.

2. Social Mention

social mention example

Social Mention is both a social search engine and a way to aggregate user-generated content across a number of networks into a single feed. It helps you search for phrases, events, and mentions, but it won't let you find individual people.

The site supports more than 100 social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. It can also scan blogs, bookmarks, and even comments.

In the left-hand panel of the results page, you'll see an abundance of data about the phrases you entered. You can find out how frequently the page is mentioned, a list of associated keywords and hashtags, top users, and more.

On the right-hand side of the screen you'll find links for exporting data into a CSV file, and along the top of the screen are various filter options.

3. snitch.name

snitchname homepage

The snitch.name site is one of the easiest on this list to use.

The site has several advantages over a regular search query on Google. For example, many social networks are either not indexed by Google, or only have very limited indexing. Snitch.name also prioritizes "people pages," whereas a regular Google search will also return results for posts mentioning the person, associated hashtags, and other content.

Obviously, even after running a search, some profiles might remain restricted depending on the said user's privacy settings. However, as long as you can access the account through your own social media account, you will be able to access the listing on snitch.name.

To use the site, fire up the homepage, enter your search terms, and mark the checkboxes next to the networks you want to scan. When you're ready, click Search.

4. Social-Searcher

social searcher

Social-Searcher is another web app that works across a broad array of social networks and other platforms.

You can use the site without making an account. Non-registered users can search the web, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit, Flickr, Dailymotion, and Vimeo. You can also save your searches and set up email alerts.

If you need a more powerful solution, you should consider signing up for one of the paid plans. For €3.50/month (US$4/month), you get 200 searches per day, three email alerts, three keyword monitors, and space for up to 3,000 saved posts. The top-level plan, which costs €20/month (US$23/month), increases the limits even further.

google social search

The same team that is responsible for the previously mentioned Social-Searcher has also developed a Google Social Search tool.

It works with six networks. They are Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. You can mark the checkboxes next to the networks' logos to limit your search to particular sites.

The usual Google search tricks apply. For example, putting quotation marks around a set of words will force Google to only return results with an exact match, adding a minus sign will exclude specific words from the results, and typing OR between words will let you roll several terms into one search result.

Results are sorted by networks, and you can click on Web or Images to toggle between the different media.

6. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo takes a slightly different approach to the tools we have mentioned so far. It specializes in searching for trends and keyword performance.

That makes it an ideal tool for businesses; they can find out what content is going to have the biggest impact when they share it, as well as gaining an insight into the words and phrases their competitors are using.

On the results page, you can use the panel on the left-hand side of the screen to create filters. Date, content type, language, country, and even word counts are searchable parameters.

On the right-hand side of the page, you can see how successful each post was. Analytics for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Reddit are shown, as are the total number of shares.

Free users can only see the top 10 results; you will need a Pro account costing $99/month to unlock more. It's probably too much money for individual users, but for businesses the cost is negligible.

7. Tweak Your Google Chrome Settings

chrome search engine

Of course, each social media platform has its own search tool that's built-in. But did you know you can use those native search tools without needing to navigate to the site itself?

It's all possible thanks to Chrome's search engine management tool. As long as you've used the site's search feature at some point, Chrome will remember it. You can then assign a keyword to the engine so you can activate it directly from Chrome's omnibox.

To see what search engines are logged in your Chrome app, go to Settings > Search engine > Manage search engines. To edit the activation keyword, click on the three dots to the right of the search engine's name and select Edit.

Which Social Media Search Engines Do You Use?

We have introduced you to some of the best social media search engines for a variety of use cases. Each of them focuses on a different type of user and presents its results in a different way. If you use them all, you should be able to quickly find the topic, person, trend, or keyword you're looking for.

On the flip side, you might want to hide your social media profiles so people can't find you using these services.