A search engine is a piece of software designed to carry out web searches. The most familiar search engines today are; "Google.com", "Yahoo.com" and some of the tech-savvy among you might also be familiar with "DuckDuckGo".

"Google Search", more commonly known as "Google" has approximately a 92% share of the global search engine market. But is Google search the best solution when it comes to searching the web?

In the day and age of web3.0, we have a tonne of options when it comes to searching for specialized information on the internet. Save this article for later, as you might find yourself coming back to it for references to different search engines for specialized searches we CS majors should be using.

Generalised Search Engines:

Before I start listing out, Let's look at two ways using different and specialized search engines might help us out.

1. When you type in your query in a search engine, it lists out all the websites (it knows about) regarding the subject, what you may find interesting is the fact that different search engines might list out results that were not even listed in the first search engine you used.
2. Specialized search engines can help you find better, more accurate results compared to generalized search engines as I will demonstrate later in this article.

Let's look at a few powerful search engines:

1. Ask Jeeves - askjeeves.com
2. LookSmart - looksmart.com
3. Teoma - teoma.com

Specialized Search Engines:

These search engines are specialized in searching for websites with respect to certain topics.

Let's say the nerd in you wants to know more about Vampires or astrology or even information about witchcraft, you can get all specialized results using - Avatar Search - avatarsearch.com

Do you want to be a detective when you grow up and crime scenes interest you more than food? Crime Spider is the search engine for you. It contains information about various crimes and law enforcement. It organizes the topics by urban legends, cybercrime and more. visit- crimespider.com

The list of specialized search engines is endless, but this article wouldn't be complete without me listing my favourite.

NerdWorld - nerdworld.com

Sadly most of these specialized search engines have died and are up for sale now. The market dominance of Google.com sure hit some search engines worse than it did to others. But if it's any compensation, you can go to allsearchengines.com to find a search engine that may fit your needs!

Meta Search Engines:

It might get difficult and troublesome to go through listings and listings of different search engines, in this case, meta-search engines come to light. They send your query to multiple search engines and return the result. (Please note: meta-search engines aren't a part of the Meta Group which owns Facebook, it's just a category of search engines that perform the task described above.)

Trick or Treat!

Most search engines today support Boolean operators. Using Boolean operators like AND, OR in your search queries can ensure you get better and more accurate results.

References :

1. Wikipedia.org
2. Steal this computer book 3 - Wallace Wang

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