Search Engines You Never Knew Existed

As a search engine junkie, I’m always pulling for the little guy with a unique idea. I love competition in the marketplace. Sadly, the dominance of Google (and others) forced many of these into the shadows.

But if you were curious like me, I present Greenlane’s active list of search engines:

• Baidu – The leading search engine in China.
• Boardreader – For forums and message boards.
• Brave – Private search engine.
• CC Search (now called openverse) – For copyright-free content.
• Clusty (now called Yippy)– Automatically categorizes search results based on what people search for.
• Disconnect – Search anonymously without the search engine tracking your searches.
• Dogpile – Metasearch engine.
• DuckDuckGo – Helps searchers protect their privacy.
• Ecosia – Plants trees around the world when you search through their service.
• Ekoru – Donates some of its revenue to partner charities.
• FindSounds – Search the web for sounds.
• Gigablast – Doesn’t track your data.
• Gibiru – Unfiltered private search.
• giveWater – Self-described social impact search engine.
• Infinity Search – Doesn’t save what users search for and doesn’t log information about visitors.
• LiveDeal – Converted to a local restaurant listings site.
• liveplasma – Search new artists based on music you already like.
• Local.com – Helps you find businesses and events in your city.
• Lukol – Completely anonymous search engine.
• MetaGer – Nonprofit organization that guarantees privacy.
• Million Short – Removes the top million most popular websites from search results.
• Neeva – Ad-free and affiliate-free search engine.
• OneSearch – Privacy search engine.
• Oscobo – Doesn’t use third-party scripts or tools.
• Pronto.com – Price comparison search engine.
• Qwant – Privacy search engine.
• Retrevo (Converted to a search engine for product manuals.)
• Search Encrypt – Uses local encryption to ensure you stay private.
• SearchMe – Visual search engine.
• Shodan – Lets you search for various types of servers, including webcams and routers.
• SlideShare – Search engine for documented slideshow presentations.
• StartPage – Private search engine that serves answers from Google.
• Swisscows – Doesn’t store personal data, IP addresses, or search queries.
• The Wayback Machine – Search old versions of web pages.
• TinEye – Reverse image search.
• Wiki.com – Search thousands of wikis.
• WolframAlpha – Compute answers to problems.
• Yandex – Popular search engine in Russia.
• ZABASEARCH – People and public information search engine.
• zapmeta – Searches simultaneously through multiple sources.

Update – Our original post was even longer, but unfortunately the rest are now offline in 2022:

• blinkx, boing, bookmach.com, BOXXET, ChaCha, Ditto, dumbfind, factbites, fazzle, Feedster, GoDefy, goshme, GoYams, Grokker, IceRocket, KartOO, Mojeek, nayio, Octora, OiHoi Search, Pagebull, PlanetSearch, Quintura, Releton, riya, SearchTheWeb2, sidekiq, Simply Google, Singing FISH, Slideshow, Speegle, Sphider, SPURL.net, S R C H R, SurfWax, Swoogle, TagJag!, thefind.com, Trexy, turboscout, UJIKO, url.com, VMGO.com, Web 2.0, Webaroo, WEBBRAIN, What to RENT?, whonu?, WIKIO, WiseNut, yoople, YuFind, Zippy, ZUULA

Which ones would you add to our list?