A List of Speciality Search Engines
Sep2Written by:
2009/09/02 09:20 AM 
Google It! has become a household phrase. The internet is a vast and unforgiving place. Without search engines it would be worse than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Normally we would gravitate to the Big Three. Google, Yahoo, and The Search Engine Previously Known as Live Search aka Bing. But those are not the only search engines around.
You might not know this, but there are literally hundreds of search engines. Some have come and gone. Amongst these are a bunch of Speciality Search Engines.
What is a Speciality Search Engine?
A speciality search engine, sometimes called a topical or vertical search engine, searches a specially-created database limited to a particular subject. Speciality search engines fall into two main categories: service or subject-specific. Speciality service search engines provide services that are often not available from larger general search engines. Subject-specific search engines search a database tailored to a particular subject. Depending on your area of interest and the type of information you are seeking, speciality search engines can provide more relevant results more quickly than a general purpose search engine such as Google or Yahoo.
For example, suppose you searched on Google for the term “labour”. Your results would be everything from government departments to job websites, construction to law. But what you were actually looking for was labour as it relates to pregnancy. So you would have to qualify that search with more search terms.
Now this is not too bad, as long as your search terms don’t become too long. What would suite you better is if you would use a speciality search engine that searches medial or pregnancy related sites only. This way you would be guaranteed to get the results you’re looking for.
Speciality search engines are also an excellent source for topical research. Because of this it would be wise to also submit your blog or website to some of the speciality search engines that cater for your niche.
Examples Of speciality Search Engines.
- SearchDotNet – Microsoft .NET related Search engine.
- AskJeeves – Your question and answer search engine.
- LawCrawler – Search engine for Legal Professionals.
- Yahooligans - Yahoo for kids, designed for ages 7 to 12.
- CleanSearch - Search engine that attempts to filter out adult content.
- MedHunt - Search engine and index of medical information.
Along with the speciality filters that the likes of Google and Yahoo offer, we would surely be able to find what we are looking for. Google also provide speciality search filters such as Scholar search, Blog Search, Image and News search.
Geographical Search Engines.
There are also geographical search engines. These search for websites that are located in a specific geographical location. Along with the geographical filters that the big three have, there are search engines like Ananzi which only search South African sites.
A Broader List
The short list above is just the tip of the ice-berg. I cannot possibly list all the speciality search engines. Here is a list of websites that in turn have a more exhaustive list of speciality search engines grouped by topic.
Related Reading:
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Google vs Bing vs Yahoo?
What is your favourite Search Engine?
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1 comment(s) so far...
Re: A List of Speciality Search Engines
Sheesh, very interesting. Sounds like there is a gap in the market though:
we need a Search Engine for Search Engines....
By Baldric on
2009/09/02 09:41 AM
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