In the modern era, technology has all the information you could ever want at your fingertips. The online world has access to all kinds of knowledge through a simple search. The best part is that there are dozens of advanced and alternative search engines at your disposal!

You can utilize the Internet to read reviews from customers, stay up to date with the most-recent technology in your business, and so much more.

Whether you’re new to the Internet or you’ve been around for a while, you’re probably familiar with the biggest search engines like Google and Bing. However, there are a lot more out there full of general knowledge.

Alternative Search Engines For Broad Search

DuckDuckGo

This is the search engine designed for people that don’t want to leave a footprint, because DuckDuckGo never tracks data on you or your search history. While that means you’ll never get personalized recommendations, you can sleep knowing your search was safe. For those Apple users out there, DuckDuckGo can actually be set as your default site on Safari.

Dogpile

Dogpile is a great search engine for saving time, because with every search they pull results from the biggest search engines out there and compile them for you. Instead of having to go to 3 or 4 sites, you can just use this one.

Wolfram Alpha

This one is more for the number-oriented searchers, because Wolfram Alpha is all about stocks, dates, data, and statistics. The entire search engine is based on metrics and algorithms designed to give you numerical information about your topic.

Startpage

Like DuckDuckGo, Startpage is another search engine that understands privacy as a key concern of surfing the Internet. This engine keeps your searches safe while disabling cookies and tracking software automatically. One of the best features here is that Startpage has a plugin for Google Chrome, so you can still use the Google search engine while knowing you’re protected.

Qwant

The last general search engine to mention is Qwant, a French search engine based out of Paris. This was the first engine to focus on privacy and provides objective results in order to stay neutral in a growing digital age.

Advanced Searching on Social Network

You’re probably familiar with the bigger social networks online, like Facebook and Twitter, but what you might not be aware of is that most of them have an advanced search feature that allows you to be more specific.

Facebook

When you type something into the search bar on Facebook, it will take you to a results page where you can use a number of filters to narrow down your search. These filters range from specifying people to pages. Of course, it will help if your search is more specific to begin with. If it’s an event you might want to specify your city or if it’s a restaurant you can specify the type of food you’re hungry for.

Twitter

The filters on Twitter work similar to Facebook’s advanced search, but because of hashtags a lot of businesses use Twitter as a way to gauge demographics. You can type in a keyword or phrase and narrow it to people in your area, and the hashtags they use will help.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social media-style work network to connect with other people and companies in your line of work. With that said, this one has a “premium members” offer that affects how focused your search can be. 3 of the best advanced search capabilities of LinkedIn are people, jobs, and answers. The people search is designed to find members of the workforce in your industry for you to communicate with, share tips and equipment, or just get to know.

Premium adds the ability to look at things like how many years they’ve worked or how large their company is, which can be a useful tool if you’re looking to add experience to your staff.

Jobs is exactly what it sounds like, where you can search for employment opportunities in your area and narrow it down to your desired field by date posted. Premium allows you to filter those results by salary, which isn’t always available on most job board sites.

LinkedIn Answers is similar to Yahoo or Quora, where you go with a question and find community answers. Unlike the forum-style setup of those sites, though, Answers has you choose the industry or field where your question might have been asked or answered first.

Keyhole

This is a useful site for bloggers, influencers, and marketing because it allows the user to search trending hashtags, keywords, and URLs across prime social networks. For example, if you launched a product with a hashtag associated you could search that hashtag. The results would show how often it was shared, what the general response to your product was, and you would be able to get an idea of the targeted demographic for future releases.

Buzzsumo

If you’re a content creator, from blogs to articles, Buzzsumo is a great source of information for you. You have to have something in mind to get the full effect, but this site shows what content has gained the most attention online so that you can angle your writing in that direction.

It should be noted that Buzzsumo has a paid version of the site that provides a lot more options, filters, and tools for you to understand the audience better and what will get you the most followers, readers, etc.

Search Engines For PDF’s, Powerpoints, and Paperwork

There are millions of presentations and professional documents on the Internet, so why not use a search engine to narrow them down?

Scribd

Like a scribe, Scribd brings you all of the original written and published work available online. You’re able to filter out your results by categories such as language or length, so start exploring your topic of interest.

SlideShare

SlideShare is to presentations what Scribd is to written content, gathering all of the online webinars, seminars, video presentations, and conferences in one place. Just type what you’re looking for into the search bar and it will pull them up by keyword.

Picture This

Every day, wondrous imagery is captured or created across the world. These search engines compile all of these images together by category. It should be noted that without a creative commons license you’ll need permission to use any of these images.

Flickr

A Yahoo engine, Flickr separates images by photography, illustration, or screenshots so you can easily find what you’re looking for.

TinEye

This one isn’t mentioned as often, but it’s very useful. Have you ever seen a picture that you really want to know the origins of, but can’t seem to find it? Simply upload that picture to the search area on TinEye and let the engine work its magic!

Pinterest

Probably the most well-known image search engine, create an account and start pinning things to your wall. You can create aesthetics, piece together a home design, or use it to plan a dream wedding.

Alternative Search Engines and Community of Creativity

These are engines designed to only bring up content with a creative commons license for your personal use.

Creative Commons

This engine lets you sift through all kinds of other popular sites like Youtube, Flickr, and Google for images that you can use for whatever you need.

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia provides content ranging from images to sound bites for your free use. With millions of files at your disposal, you’re sure to find what you’re looking for.

Beyond Google

You’ve heard of and probably used Google, but you may not realize the advanced search abilities of the main site. Besides the advanced search that has more filters, there’s Google Scholar and Google Books, for instance. Google Scholar lets you search specifically for academic content, from thesis papers and court papers to university publications. Google Books, on the other hand, searches keywords, author names, and phrases across all of literature. You can narrow this down by books or magazines, but you can also find downloadable public domain books in their entirety.

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re concerned with privacy or looking for something extremely specific from images to non-fictional articles published in academia, there’s a search engine for everyone. Now you know a few more options that will hopefully help you find your optimal engine.