Search Engines
Google
The industry standard. Google offers tips on how to refine your web searches in its Help Center.
It’s easy to fall into a Google-only mode, but even Google’s huge database misses about half of the searchable Web. Other search engines can find things Google missed. The following are well-regarded:
Bing
Formerly Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search
DuckDuckGo
Search engine offering greater privacy and the ability to opt out of ads. DuckDuckGo does not collect or share users’ personal information or track users’ searches.
Yahoo!
The Avis to Google’s Hertz
Meta Search Engines
These search engines can pull together results from a number of search engines at once, but don’t delve as deeply into the databases.
Dogpile
Dogpile claims to return “all the best results from leading search engines including Google and Yahoo!, so you find what you’re looking for faster.”
Info.com
Pulls from Google, Yahoo! and Bing
Guides to Search Engines
Search Engine Guide
Handy for its Search Engine Directory of search engines devoted to arts, business, education, government, reference, news, etc. (however, many of its directory links appear to be outdated).
Search Engine Land
Primarily focused on SEO/SEM and “all aspects of digital marketing, advertising technology and the martech landscape,” with news coverage related to Google (including a section devoted to Google algorithm updates), Bing, Amazon and other shopping search engines, etc., that can be useful for search engine users.
Internet Archive
The Wayback Machine from the Internet Archive
This site can be an absolute lifesaver at those times when you need to capture a bio or news item that has been deleted from a website. Webpages from as long ago as 1996 (ancient in terms of the web’s short history!) are archived here.