Technology Guides

Google has long dominated the search engine market and with Yahoo and Live way behind, as well as other search engines such as Ask there really isn’t much choice.

Cuil

One that had some big hype was Cuil (pronounced cool) because it is superior to Google in some ways. It indexes 3 times as many web pages as Google does and 10 times more than Microsoft. Now with the partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft things may change for Bing as it will have more freedom as to how it can market itself better. The cool thing about Cuil though, is the way it displays its search results.

As you can see from the above screenshot of my search for Toronto Maple Leafs, it basically becomes like a website displaying it in squares with widgets on the side. Depending on what you search a map will appear or for this particular search a timeline appeared for the Toronto Maple Leaf’s franchise.

Unlike Google you can narrow down your search further by scrolling down and clicking on a category. To me this is really great because there are definitely people like me who can’t search to the full potential of what these sites offer and this helps you search for what you really want. You can also roll over words under “Explore My Category” and get a definition as well as the top results for that word. Another good thing that privacy watchdogs will love is the fact that all searches are private because Cuil does not rely on previous users searches, it relies solely on the web pages and looks at the content rather than the popularity. This to me sums up Cuil “Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil.”

FactBites

FactBites has taken a different approach just like Google did when it first entered the industry. It is trying to offer a new services to the vast market of searchers in the world. It is a clean search engine just like Google but it searches slightly differently than Google. Factbites searches for matches on the basis of your whole topic area, not just the keyword. This means that it can return relevant, informative results on your topic that don’t necessarily mention the word you searched for. It also returns search results with a small summary of around 3 points that describe the page so you can have more confidence when you click a search result that it will provide relevant information that pertains to your search. On top of that it tells you how many words are in on that webpage. Sadly it is still in the beta stage so some of your searches won’t work but it will very soon.

KartOO

KartOO was first suggested to me by my high school and I was extremely fascinated by it because of the way it laid out the search results. It displays it in a mind map almost where it links each webpage with another webpage and ever since I started using it I’ve never found a mind map on the first try without a useful link. Usually there are numerous useful links and so I continue to go back. I will continue to update this list with brief descriptions of each and feel free to suggest more you like because we all get bored of Google sometime.

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