Here is a list of 3 search engines you don’t know about. We all use search engines in our daily life for different purposes. No matter what we have to search on Internet, search engines are our starting point. And whenever we talk about search engines, we only think about the popular ones like Google, Bing, Ask.com, Yahoo! and some not so popular ones like DuckDuckGo, but there are many more search engines out there which can serve the purpose.
Out of those many search engines, I’ve shortlisted these 3 lesser known search engines which you can try out if you are fed up of using Google a few thousand times a day :)
Note: There are many other search engines as well, but most of them just get the search results from Google or Bing, so I have not included them in this list. These are the ones that do their own indexing and use their own data to provide search results.
1. Yandex:
The first search engine in the list is Yandex. Although it is the most popular search engine in Russia, but it is still unknown for most of the Internet users who reside outside Russia. This search engine has one of the cleanest user interface, with just a few icons and a big search bar. Apart from regular web search, it also lets you search for images, maps, videos, and translations. There are two more icons which take you to Yandex Mail and Yandex Browser.
The search results page is also pretty clean with search box at the top displaying the query entered by you, along with the number of search results found. For each individual search result, the Yandex displays that particular website’s favicon. For search results, you can also set settings like search mode, results filter by time, language, and file format. It also has a unique feature using which you can specify a particular website and region name to get limited and specific results.
2. Blekko:
The second search engine in the list is Blekko. The main feature of Blekko is that it provides slashtags. So, if you are trying to do a search on a topic, you can try to do that using a slashtag and get results from a curated list. This potentially reduces the spam results that comes in Blekko’s search results. Also, it is the search engine with one of the best user experience. It is also the only search engine in the list which displays Trending Topics on the homepage. Each trending topic is accompanied by a related image and you can search for that topic by clicking on the image. All the search results are divided into following categories: Quick Answer, Top Results, Shopping, Social, Latest Results, and some other sections which depend upon the query entered by you. It also shows images related to the query on the right side.
Update 2022: Blekko doesn’t exist anymore. Use some other alternatives instead. We recommend this list.
3. Gigablast:
The third lesser known search engine in the list is Gigablast. It has actually been around since the year 2000! It is an open-source search engine which also claims about being one of the 4 remaining United States search engines which maintains their own searchable index of more than 1 billion pages. It also claims itself to be the transparent search engine by showing why a particular search result has been ranked at the position which it holds.
On search results page, it shows an option More from this website. This option lets you see results from that particular website. At the bottom of the search result page, it provides links to Google and Bing for performing your search on them. Apart from normal web search, it also lets you perform directory search and event search (powered by EventGuru.com).
I hope you like these search engines that I unearthed for you. My personal favorite in this list is Blekko, as I really like its concept of curated search results. If you know some more of them, feel free to share them with me.
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