Monthly Archives: July 2011

Google reigns as the undisputed king of the jungle, but there’s plenty of other critters in this zoo. Despite – or perhaps because of – its predominance and scope, Google may not be the best for every inquiry where personal privacy concerns or a particularly obscure topic is involved. What follows is a list – by no means comprehensive — of some current search engines. They are divided into two types: general or open in nature, and specialized or closed. The major difference is that specialized search engines are either dedicated to a particular topic, or limit the search arena to preselected categories usually from a drop-down menu or scrolling pane. These days, neither type of tool stands as alone as they once frequently did. If general in nature, they may be part of a huge content portal offering numerous other services, like maps and translating tools and email. Specialized ones are just as likely to be a feature of large sites, such as online department stores and libraries, but just about every merchant with a website has a some search capability available. We’ll only be able to look at a few samples of the most popular, useful, or offbeat ones.