Inkmesh ebook search engine will search across these sites finding free books and comparing prices. Video.
posted by stbalbach on Dec 5, 2009 - 13 comments

Spezify is a metasearch engine. The interface is in Flash.
posted by ardgedee on Sep 29, 2009 - 38 comments

"Worio is a discovery engine that works alongside keyword search to expose you to stuff you've been missing using search alone." (via) [more inside]
posted by gman on Jun 17, 2009 - 17 comments

Google has released an experimental search tool, Google Squared, that presents search results in the form of a table. Each column represents some attribute or dimension of the things returned - for example, searching for US presidents yields a column for date of birth, and rows for Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, etc. [more inside]
posted by Zarkonnen on Jun 5, 2009 - 70 comments

To celebrate their 10th birthday Google have brought back their oldest available index dating back to 2001.
posted by HaloMan on Sep 30, 2008 - 110 comments

TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology. [more inside]
posted by monospace on Aug 21, 2008 - 34 comments

Google Search Engine Ranking Factors v2 "represents the collective wisdom of 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization. Together, they have voted on the various factors that are estimated to comprise Google's ranking algorithm." The highest ranked factor is Keyword Use in Title Tag.
posted by Soup on Aug 18, 2008 - 56 comments

Cuil is a new search engine developed by former Google employees, and claims to index 3x more pages than Google. CNN Money story has the basics. My attempts were met with timeouts. [more inside]
posted by Ynoxas on Jul 28, 2008 - 189 comments

If Google was designed for Google.
posted by armoured-ant on Oct 16, 2007 - 36 comments

Sputtr is a front-end for searching a variety of popular sites, of course dipped in some Web 2.0 sauce.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on May 12, 2007 - 29 comments

Yahoo! Australia introduces a new search engine that uses OpenSearch and pretty little AJAX tricks to integrate results from Flickr, Wikpedia, YouTube (and so on). You can customize the layout, and even add your own search sources. It’s called Alpha, it’s currently in Beta, and aims to get through the rest of the Greek alphabet by June. (Via podlob.)
posted by Milkman Dan on Apr 10, 2007 - 13 comments

Microsoft has unleashed their internet search engine to the world. It currently isn't working, at least for me. Is it wrong of me to wish it stays that way?
posted by ashbury on Nov 11, 2004 - 43 comments

blinkx is a new contextual search agent that seems to be causing some excitement. Unfortunately, it is not available for Macintosh or Mozilla at present.
posted by davehat on Jul 15, 2004 - 13 comments

I found these images, one, two, when I typed in “tent” in the “search all fields” field and selected image as resource type. The site is OAIster, which is a digital library, which has 3,273,233 records from 301 institutions. Its my new magic eight ball. (via)
posted by JohnR on Jun 20, 2004 - 15 comments

Mining the Deep Web. Google indexes 4 billion pages, but there are hundreds of billions of documents out there in the Deep Web that are effectively unreachable by search engines because they are locked in databases or are unsearchable media. It looks like Yahoo is going to start giving us a peek by providing unified access to a wide variety of sites that are ordinarily only searchable by their own custom search engines.
posted by badstone on Mar 2, 2004 - 12 comments

Amazon as search engine. Is it just me, or does every search on Amazon.com result in 90% results for discontinued items or stuff they don't bother to sell? I'm not very confident.
posted by troybob on Sep 25, 2003 - 11 comments

Grub: The seti@home of search engines?
According to the New Scientist: "A distributed computing project called Grub, which harnesses individual users' spare computing power and internet bandwidth, began cataloguing millions of web pages this week."
Grub has thus launched before HyperBee, a similar distributed search project.
This link was previously posted on MeFi when it was still in the conceptual stage.
The project is being run by LookSmart (along with its own open directory project called zeal) but as the New Scientist article notes: "Website information collected by Grub is already being fed into one of LookSmart's search services, called WiseNut. But the collected data are also freely accessible to the public, so they can be incorporated into any web site or desktop application."
Possible Google competition or doomed from the start?
posted by talos on Apr 21, 2003 - 10 comments

Forget BlogChalking. Go by the globe. A (slightly) simpler cousin of the GeoTags search engine (which I could never get useful information from anyway), the GeoURL ICBM Address Server (by Joshua Schachter of Memepool) pegs sites to specific points on the planet via good old-fashioned coordinates and META tags. While the web supposedly has no borders, many sites - like blogs - have a place at their heart, a virtual (if not physical) home. Now you can see if your site has neighbors. [Via Blogdex - More Inside]
posted by pzarquon on Jan 8, 2003 - 8 comments

A warning shot in the dark: For connoisseurs of clever turns of phrase: The phrase "a warning shot in the dark" popped out at me from a Google News preview panel as being a mixed metaphor. Indeed, a Google search reveals that the phrase has never before been used on the entire Web, which is rather amazing. Delving into the story, it appears by paragraph three that the mixed metaphors are appropriate, in this case.
posted by beagle on Nov 27, 2002 - 35 comments

BBC funds ad-free, porn-free search engine. Fueled by UK television license fees and Google search technology, the engine doesn't kick out results from paying advertisers. News article here.
posted by CosmicSlop on May 15, 2002 - 6 comments

Teoma takes on Google?
Ask Jeves launched its new search engine yesterday aimed at challenging Google for the best search engine on the web. Teoma offers options to narrow your search using "subject-specific popularity." For example, if someone searched for the name "Bill Clinton," Teoma offers ways to refine your search, showing links to topics related to your search, such as "Clinton Scandal" and "Monica Lewinsky." Will this search engine replace Google as the SE of choice for the Internet savvy? Also, what other search engines do you use?
posted by DragonBoy on Apr 2, 2002 - 36 comments

Google Catalog Search uses Google technology to search thousands of scanned mail-order catalogs, from industrial adhesives to designer clothing and gourmet food.
posted by danec on Dec 14, 2001 - 33 comments

FindSounds.com is your source for on-line sound effects. Their search engine has found and catalogued sounds in several formats. You can search by name, and their spectral analyzer can help you find sounds similar to your search results.
posted by ewagoner on Oct 15, 2001 - 17 comments

Sex no longer interesting. "All the major search engines reported that the word 'sex' had fallen out of their top ten search terms for the first time in the web's young history, replaced with the likes of 'BBC' and 'CNN'." (Scroll down to "SARAH LEFT ON INTERNET NEWS".)
posted by pracowity on Sep 28, 2001 - 14 comments

Lasoo, location-based search engine. Really slick. They've improved it a lot since I last visited.
posted by SilentSalamander on Sep 25, 2001 - 12 comments

Google Current Events: Always the innovator, Google's brains make it easier to find news (and archives of news) about all of today's events.
posted by anildash on Sep 11, 2001 - 1 comment

Lycos Legal - Terms and Conditions This is by far the longest legal agreement I have ever seen for a web site. 15,144 words that would occupy over 31 printed pages. 38 distinct types of prohibited conduct.
posted by jeffbarr on Jul 23, 2001 - 13 comments

For Sale. Pre-owned Search Engine $250,000,000 o.n.o

Google is hinting at an end of year IPO for a measley $250 million. Is this the beginning of the end of the dot-com crash?. Via The Register.
posted by fullerine on Jun 25, 2001 - 22 comments

Interesting idea, but will it work? "Grub provides a free for download, distributed crawling client, which is used to create an infrastructure (database + volunteers) that will eventually provide URL update status information for nearly every web page on the Internet. Grub's distributed crawler network will enable websites, content providers, and individuals to notify others that changes have occurred in their content, all in real time"
posted by sixdifferentways on May 18, 2001 - 0 comments

Altavista to become only search engine
Not really, but they do plan on enforcing several search-related patents that they have, hoping to increase revenue by extorting other search companies. "We believe that virtually everyone out there who indexes the Web is in violation of at least several of those key patents.... If you index a distributed set of databases - what the Internet is - and even within intranets, corporations, that's one of the patents," says CMGI CEO David Wetherell.
posted by daveadams on Jan 18, 2001 - 25 comments

Stuck in the past? Ok, while this is hardly news it's annoying as hell. No matter what I search for, it doesn't pull any articles up after 1/1/2001. What's worse is they don't appear to have ANY contact emails for anyone other then a frustrating "feedback" form. Grrrr. There's got to be other comprehensive live news search sites....
posted by bkdelong on Jan 6, 2001 - 3 comments

Isn't this how the IMDB got started? Maybe this guy will eventually be able to sell out. (But to who?)
posted by Steven Den Beste on Oct 30, 2000 - 14 comments

Search Engine Northernlight Donating Ad Revenue to Hospital One of my favorite search engines, Northernlight.com, is doing some benefit work -- during the week of October 14th through October 20th, searches on Northern Light will benefit the Duke Children's Hospital. Pretty cool -- and they're a good search engine, too.
posted by metrocake on Oct 16, 2000 - 2 comments

Has Google finally sold out? You may have already seen this via Robot Wisdom - evidence that Google has monkeyed with their search engine to give preference to partner Yahoo!'s pages. I guess it had to happen sooner or later, but I'm sad. Anyone know of a better search engine on the horizon that still has integrity?
posted by straight on Sep 13, 2000 - 8 comments

Google: advanced search — this is new, no?
posted by sylloge on Aug 9, 2000 - 8 comments

Do the time warp Surf with the browsers of yesteryear...
posted by owillis on Jul 31, 2000 - 4 comments

AltaVista redesigns. Comments? I like it.
posted by Succa on Jul 29, 2000 - 31 comments

SearchBots.net is a search engine, or a weblog, or yet another grituitous Flash site, depending on how you look at it. I think it's neato.
posted by endquote on Jun 7, 2000 - 2 comments

Google appears to be telling a story with their logo. Is this a fun and creative way to "extend their brand" (as the marcom kids like to say) or do they need to stop letting their engineers handle their logo design?
posted by jkottke on May 2, 2000 - 22 comments

Oh my, talk about your imperfect applications of technology. I'm searching for an image of one of those "Hello my name is..." badges for a little joke, so I tried out Lycos' image search engine. After about five pages into the search for images containing "hello", a porn image would pop up on almost every search page. "Hello" is a generic term, so there's pictures of babies and kids right next to some gnarly stuff. Here's an example of a kid and a hello kitty image juxtaposed between some interesting images. Here's another: doll, doll, people screwing each other's brains out, hello kitty mouse....
posted by mathowie on Mar 6, 2000 - 4 comments

My god, does the new Altavista look butt-ugly. Can you find anything anymore? I could barely see the search box when I first loaded it. And that new logo? Yawn..... And what's up with the new slogan? Smart is beautiful? What's next: 'Altavista: Check out the size of our brains'?
posted by mathowie on Oct 25, 1999 - 0 comments