For many years, the process of finding information on the web has annoyed me a bit, which is why I’ve spent some time looking for alternatives to Google and the other traditional search engines. Until this date I’ve found these appealing alternatives:
- Metacrawler is a meta search engine, i.e. it searches the other engines, and presents the results in a traditional list form. I’ve been using it for the past decade or so.
- KartOO is also a meta search engine, but the results are presented on a map where connections are visualized. A bonus for those who speak several languages is the possibility of changing language with just one click on a different flag so that you don’t have to start all over again with a navigation to another “subpage” (of for instance Google). You can also save your result map.
- Quintura is a new type of search engine that helps you refine your query instead of start all over again. In addition to the traditional list of links, there’s a cloud of refining terms with your original term centered at the center of it. You then choose a term to combine with the first one and then make a new query, only to narrow the list of links down. Finally, you can save and share your result.
- Walk2web is a starting point for “walking the web”, meandering along connections between sites, which means you start by entering a url and then walk2web shows you the incoming and outgoing connections to/from that particular site. The idea is not to go looking for answers to specific questions, but to browse rather aimlessly within a bigger category. This is a brilliant idea and I wonder why nobody has done this years ago.
I have also looked for specific search engines, i.e. engines that search within only one field, for instance medicine. So far I’ve found these pages:
- Medworm is a medical RSS filter engine.
- Intute, a service provided by several of the universities in UK, can help you on the way if you want subject-specific access to trustworthy web resources. (Trustworthy says who? Well, that’s what they claim on their homepage…) Especially their Virtual Training Suite is worth giving a shot, since it can direct you to search engines covering only your particular field.
- For instance the medicine-specific VTU directed me to MedHunt, an engine provided by Swiss HON, Health On the Net Foundation.
As the web expands, evolves and becomes more difficult to navigate, I find it crucial to know not only where but also how to find information fast and efficiently. Personal information management (PIM) is highly relevant these days and there is a vast array of tools to help on the way. Most people are rather “conservative” in their choice of search engine and this is an attempt to challenge that habitual behaviour, to shake things up a bit, so stay tuned.
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