Little-known search engines. Programs for searching files on a computer

A search engine is a database of specific information on the Internet. Many users believe that as soon as they enter a query into a search engine, the entire Internet immediately begins to be scanned, but this is not at all true. The Internet is scanned constantly, by many programs, data about sites is entered into a database, where, according to certain criteria, all sites and all their pages are distributed into various types of lists and databases. That is, it is a kind of file cabinet of data, and the search takes place not on the Internet, but on this file cabinet.

Google is the most popular search engine in the world.

In addition to the search engine, Google offers many additional services, programs and hardware, including an email service, Google Chrome browser, the largest YouTube video library and many other projects. Google is confidently buying up many projects that bring large profits. Most of the services are not aimed at the direct user, but at making money on the Internet and are integrated with a focus on the interests of European and American users.

Mail is a search engine that is popular mainly because of its email service.

There are many additional services, the key of which is Mail, at the moment the Mail company owns the social network Odnoklassniki, its own network “My World”, the Money-mail service, many online games, three almost identical browsers with different names. All applications and services contain a lot of advertising content. The social network VKonatkte blocks direct transitions to Mail services, justifying them with a large number of viruses.

Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is a search reference system.

The non-profit search engine, which operates on private donations, therefore does not fill its pages with advertising. A multilingual project whose goal is to create a complete reference encyclopedia in all languages ​​of the world. It has no specific authors and is completed and managed by volunteers from all over the world. Each user can both write and edit an article.

Official page - www.wikipedia.org.

Youtube is the largest library of video files.

Video hosting with elements of a social network, where each user can add a video. Since their acquisition by Google Ink, separate registration for YouTube is not required, just register in the Google email service.

Official page - youtube.com.

Yahoo! is the second most important search engine in the world.

There are additional services, the most famous of which is Yahoo mail. As part of improving the quality of the search engine, Yahoo transfers data about users and their queries to Microsoft. From this data, an idea of ​​the interests of users is formed, and a market for advertising content is formed. The Yahoo search engine, like , is engaged in the acquisition of other companies, for example, Yahoo owns the Altavista search service and the e-commerce site Alibaba.

Official page - www.yahoo.com.

WDL is a digital library.

The library collects books that provide cultural value in digital form. The main goal is to increase the level of cultural content of the Internet. Access to the library is free.

Official page - www.wdl.org/ru/.

Bing is a search engine from Microsoft.

Official page - www.baidu.com.

Search engines in Russia

Rambler is a “pro-American” search engine.

Initially it was created as an Internet media portal. Like many other search engines, it has search services for images, video files, maps, weather forecasts, news section and much more. Publishers also offer a free browser, Rambler-Nichrome.

Official page - www.rambler.ru.

Nigma is an intelligent search engine.

A more convenient search engine due to the presence of many filters and settings. The interface allows you to include or exclude suggested similar values ​​in the search to obtain better results. Also, when receiving a search result, it allows you to use information from other major search engines.

Official page - www.nigma.ru.

Aport - online product catalog.

In the past, a search engine, but after development and innovation were stopped, it quickly lost ground and . Currently, Aport is a trading platform on which the products of more than 1,500 companies are presented.

Official page - www.aport.ru.

Sputnik is a national search engine and Internet portal.

Created by Rostelecom. Currently in testing stage.

Official page - www.sputnik.ru.

Metabot is a growing search engine.

Metabot's tasks are to create a search engine for all other search engines, creating results positions taking into account data from the entire list of search engines. That is, it is a search engine for search engines.

Official page - www.metabot.ru.

The search engine has been suspended.

Official page - www.turtle.ru.

KM is a multiportal.

Initially, the site was a multiportal with the subsequent introduction of a search engine. The search can be carried out both within the site and across all monitored RuNet sites.

Official page - www.km.ru.

Gogo - does not work, redirects to a search engine.

Official page - www.gogo.ru.

The Russian multiportal, not very popular, requires improvement. The search engine includes news, television, games, and a map.

Official page - www.zoneru.org.

The search engine does not work, the developers suggest using the search engine.

Programs for searching information on the Internet.

↓ New in the "Information Search" category:

Free
Directory of Moscow enterprises Azimuth 1.0.4 is an application optimized for any user. The application includes a structured database of organizations for Moscow, as well as a telephone and address database of enterprises.

Free
vkontakte.ru Audio 1.0 is a convenient application for searching and downloading mp3 files from the vkontakte.ru service. The vkontakte.ru Audio application is completely free and offers only voluntary donations of 1 - 2 WMZ to the author on webmoney wallet: Z195735503467

Free
VKontakte.DJ 3.40 is a convenient application that will allow you to download music and videos from the VKontakte network. The Vkontakte.DJ application makes it possible to download individual files or entire albums.

Free
Torrent Searcher 9.0 RC1 is a search engine application that searches and downloads from Torrent networks. The Torrent Searcher application will help you quickly find music, graphic files, movies, programs or any other files on the Fasttrack, Ares, OpenFT or Gnutella networks.

Free
ListTV 3.8.9.5 is an application that provides high-quality viewing of a list of TV shows with a choice for days of the week or a specific channel. The ListTV application will help you view what broadcasts are being broadcast on what channels and what a particular channel will broadcast at a specified time.

Free
Jobee 1.0.0.788 is a convenient and high-quality player that will provide you with comfortable listening to a large number of Internet radio stations or audio podcasts. The application will also help you watch Internet television, read RSS feeds, and also find and read a lot of books.

Free
Internet Links 53.0 is an application with a database of snares to Internet pages with the most interesting information. The Internet Links application contains more than 10,600 links.

Free
FREE Music Downloader Studio 2 build 2.2.4 is a convenient application for downloading, searching or listening to MP3 files contained on portals such as Best-Mp3.Ru, TutMp3.Net, Zaycev.Net, MuzCafe.Net, Myzuka.Ru and MuzGruz. Ru.

Free
Etxt Anti-Plagiarism 2.0.37 is an application for assessing the uniqueness of text and searching for plagiarism on the Internet. The Etxt Anti-Plagiarism application will help you effectively and quickly check any text for uniqueness in relation to other sites.

Free
Auto TGP Explorer 3.14a is a free application for conveniently viewing photo galleries from erotic content sites. The Auto TGP Explorer application analyzes the content of the specified site and sorts links to its photo galleries.

Free
Vkontakte Audio Downloader 2.0 will help users who are fans of the VKontakte.ru site or who like the music that is available there.

Free
Robot-Damaku 0.0.2 will help you collect email and web addresses from the Internet. The Robot-Damaku program can bypass most of the traps, false address generators, tricks and other protections that are aimed at preventing the extraction of information from web pages. Most of the addresses on Internet pages are in a protected or encrypted state from being processed by e-mail search engines; using the “anti-anti-spam” function in the robot you can train to receive, decode or remove most of the protections from addresses and immediately add them to your database.

Free
IPNetlnfo is designed to view information about an IP address, e-mail or phone. Takes information from WHOIS databases on the Internet.

Paid
SiteSputnik is a small application that is designed to search, analyze, collect and monitor information posted on the Internet. The utility allows you to obtain the most complete information on specified queries, spending much less time searching.

Free
LENIN INC Search Machine is a small program designed to search for almost any information on the Internet. This application works on the basis of standard search robots of the largest search engines.

Paid
NetworkSleuth is a system for searching various files over the Internet. The program allows you to search by file name, as well as by specific types of format, for example, search for MP3 files.

We've released a new book, Social Media Content Marketing: How to Get Inside Your Followers' Heads and Make Them Fall in Love with Your Brand.

If you really understand something, then thoroughly. And if you subscribe to our blog, it means you probably want to become a cool specialist or want to know more about searching on the Internet. To achieve what you want, tricks and life hacks are not enough. We need to expand our horizons.

A search engine is a large and complex program designed to search for information on the Internet.

Have you ever wondered how what we use every day came to be, what types of things exist on the Internet, and why all studios only work with and? You shouldn’t put such questions on hold. Just 10 minutes and here's another topic of conversation that you can easily support.

How search engines appeared

A long time ago, when the Internet was young and green...

Users, who, it must be said, were very few, had enough of their own bookmarks. But this did not last long: soon it became difficult for a person to navigate the diversity that appeared on the Internet in a short time.

And in order to somehow organize the chaos, Yahoo, DMOZ and other directories were invented (some still exist to this day), into which the authors added and sorted emerging sites into categories. For a while, life became easier.

But the Internet continued to expand, and soon the size of the catalogs became something mind-bogglingly gigantic. Then the developers first thought about searching inside directories, and only then about creating an automated system for indexing everything that is on the Internet in order to simplify the work for all users.

This is how the first search robots appeared.

Which search engine was the first?

The first search engine is considered Wandex (well, confused with Yandex!).This and other early services were, of course, far from perfect. When responding to a search query, they returned something completely different from what we are used to seeing now, i.e. not the most relevant pages, and everything in a row, ignoring ranking. On January 1, 2012, Wandex was relaunched.

This is how the first PS began its work.What search engines are there?on the modern Internet? Attached is the list.

What types of search engines are there: kings of the dance floor

Surprisingly, there are those who arguehow is the search engine better. I wouldn’t do this, simply because they are different and in general it all depends on the purpose and what kind of user you are.

Yandex

This is the most popular search engine in our country. LiveInternet claims that Yandex used by 50.9%, while Google accounts for 40.6% (data from June 2015).

There is a myth that says that Yandex has many times more commercial requests than its closest competitor. A couple of times I came across the idea that, thanks to regionalism honed over the years, the type of audience or its number may vary - this is the reason for Yandex’s primacy in commercial queries. So don't believe this. They're lying.

Google

The Google search engine is the most popular everywhere except Russia :) It has a bunch of possibilities in different directions. In general, the undisputed world leader among search robots.

Google itself appeared around the same time as Yandex, and came to us in Russia only in 2004, when Yandex strengthened its position.

The process of searching on Google has already become a household word for many earthlings. But when I tell my mom “Google”, she still goes to look for the information she needs in Yandex :) She has no idea at allwhat search engines exist on the Internet.

What search engines are there: a list of little-known search engines

Most Internet users don't even knowWhat search engines are there besides Yandex?and Google. So here they are;) Meet us!

The search share of this search engine can hardly be called large, but the indicators are gradually growing. Although you should not miss the fact that these numbers directly depend on Odnoklassniki, Mail.ru mail and other things from the Mail corporation.

This is real old school. Just imagine: when this search engine appeared, some SEOs were just learning to walk. In general, Rambler had a chance to rule the show in, but this did not happen for a number of reasons. Currently, it is no longer quite a search engine, but a kind of set of services that use the Yandex engine as a search - for example, they have their own . Attendance, by the way, is quite decent: a little more than a million users visit the Rambler main page per day.

Rambler also has a version Rambler Lite (all the same, only without weather, news, advertising and other things) and XRambler , which combines 15 search engines at once.

How many names has this search engine changed! Over the course of 8 years, he managed to vilify the name MSN Search, then Windows Live Search, then shortened the previous name to Live Search, and now he has come to the name Bing. Many argue that the search quality is close to the Google standard.

Now it is difficult to call Yahoo a search engine, since according to the agreement, all sites owned by Yahoo use the Bing search engine. The latest news about the agreement can be found at Searchengines.

Webalta

Surely this so-called search engine is familiar to you. Have you had to pick it out like a tick from your browser?For a long time now, everyone has known about the dark affairs of this search engine. Alas, no one is interested in this PS. Users are only looking for articles on how to remove this crap from their computer.

Nygma

This search engine is significantly different from the rest. And if the index base of other search engines does not surprise anyone, then the ability to solve problems in chemistry and mathematics distinguishes Nigma from other search engines. Nigma also offers search for music, books, games and torrents.

The search engine, created by order of the Russian government, is considered the world's first state search engine. Offers a separate medical search (search for pharmacies, medicines and articles about diseases). A very convenient theme with “Convenient Country”, where all the recommendations that help the citizen are collected in one place. Here, for example, is the “Documents” section.

This PS is significantly different from the onewhat types of search engines are there on the Internet?. DuckDuckGo - search engine open source and an interesting policy of not using a “filter bubble”. For those who don’t know: a “filter bubble” is when a search engine shows in the search results only those search results that it (this PS) considers necessary for a specific user. At the same time, no one is interested in the user’s opinion. DuckDuckGo assures that using their search engine ensures that you get all the information that the search engine has.

“DuckDuckGo” is gaining momentum. Already this summer (2015), the creator of the PS reported three billion requests in annual terms.

While writing this article, I had several questions. In such cases, I don’t rely on extradition, yes, and why, if there’s a person sitting next to me who knows everything about the Internet? Mini-interview with Igor Ivanov.

Igor Ivanov

Head of SEMANTICA studio

If my site is in Google and Yandex, will my site be at the top of the search results in other, smaller search engines?

There is a very high probability that this will happen. Yandex and Google are developing their algorithms in the right direction and other search engines are following their example. There was a case when Google experts noticed that the Bing search engine not only copied their algorithms, but also their search results.

Why probability and not absolute certainty? Because other search engines will not have time to adjust their ranking algorithms to the standard set by their more successful competitors.

Is it even worth promoting in Sputnik, Mail and other “our” search engines? Which search engine is better?

They have long become an integral part of the Russian Internet. Search engines are now huge and complex mechanisms that represent not only an information search tool, but also tempting areas for business.

Most search engine users have never thought (or thought about it, but did not find an answer) about the principle of operation of search engines, the scheme for processing user requests, what these systems consist of and how they function...

This master class is designed to answer the question of how search engines work. However, you will not find here factors that influence the ranking of documents. Moreover, you should not count on a detailed explanation of the Yandex algorithm. He, according to Ilya Segalovich, the director of technology and development of the Yandex search engine, can only be recognized “under torture” by Ilya Segalovich himself...

2. Concept and functions of a search engine

A search system is a software and hardware complex designed to search the Internet and respond to a user request, specified in the form of a text phrase (search query), by producing a list of links to sources of information, in order of relevance (in accordance with the request). The largest international search engines: "Google", Yahoo , MSN . On the Russian Internet these are Yandex, Rambler, Aport.

Let's take a closer look at the concept of a search query using the Yandex search engine as an example. The search query should be formulated by the user in accordance with what he wants to find, as briefly and simply as possible. Let's say we want to find information in Yandex on how to choose a car. To do this, open the Yandex main page and enter the text of the search query “how to choose a car.” Next, our task comes down to opening the links provided at our request to sources of information on the Internet. However, it is quite possible that we will not find the information we need. If this happens, then either you need to rephrase your request, or the search engine database really does not have any relevant information on our request (this can happen when asking very “narrow” queries, such as, for example, “how to choose a car in Arkhangelsk”)

The primary goal of any search engine is to deliver to people exactly the information they are looking for. And teach users to make “correct” requests to the system, i.e. queries that comply with the operating principles of search engines are impossible. Therefore, developers create algorithms and operating principles for search engines that would allow users to find the information they are looking for.

This means the search engine must “think” the same way the user thinks when searching for information. When a user makes a request to a search engine, he wants to find what he needs as quickly and easily as possible. Receiving the result, he evaluates the performance of the system, guided by several basic parameters. Did he find what he was looking for? If he didn’t find it, how many times did he have to rephrase the query to find what he was looking for? How much relevant information could he find? How quickly did the search engine process the query? How user-friendly were the search results presented? Was the result you were looking for the first or the hundredth? How much unnecessary garbage was found along with useful information? Will the necessary information be found when accessing a search engine, say, in a week, or in a month?

In order to satisfy all these questions with answers, search engine developers are constantly improving search algorithms and principles, adding new functions and capabilities, and trying in every possible way to speed up the operation of the system.

3. Main characteristics of the search engine

Let us describe the main characteristics of search engines:

• Completeness

  Completeness is one of the main characteristics of a search system, which is the ratio of the number of documents found by request to the total number of documents on the Internet that satisfy the given request. For example, if there are 100 pages on the Internet containing the phrase “how to choose a car,” and only 60 of them were found for the corresponding query, then the completeness of the search will be 0.6. Obviously, the more complete the search, the less likely it is that the user will not find the document he needs, provided that it exists on the Internet at all.

• Accuracy

  Accuracy is another main characteristic of a search engine, which is determined by the degree to which the found documents match the user's query. For example, if the query “how to choose a car” contains 100 documents, 50 of them contain the phrase “how to choose a car”, and the rest simply contain these words (“how to choose the right radio and install it in a car”), then the search accuracy is considered equal to 50/100 (=0.5). The more accurate the search, the faster the user will find the documents he needs, the less various kinds of “garbage” will be found among them, the less often the found documents will not correspond to the request.

• Relevance

  Relevance is an equally important component of search, which is characterized by the time that passes from the moment documents are published on the Internet until they are entered into the search engine index database. For example, the day after interesting news appeared, a large number of users turned to search engines with relevant queries. Objectively, less than a day has passed since the publication of news information on this topic, but the main documents have already been indexed and available for search, thanks to the existence of the so-called “fast database” of large search engines, which is updated several times a day.

• Search speed

  Search speed is closely related to its load resistance. For example, according to Rambler Internet Holding LLC, today during business hours the Rambler search engine receives about 60 requests per second. Such workload requires reducing the processing time of an individual request. Here the interests of the user and the search engine coincide: the visitor wants to get results as quickly as possible, and the search engine must process the request as quickly as possible, so as not to slow down the calculation of subsequent queries.

• Visibility

4. Brief history of the development of search engines

In the initial period of Internet development, the number of its users was small, and the amount of available information was relatively small. For the most part, only research staff had access to the Internet. At this time, the task of searching for information on the Internet was not as urgent as it is now.

One of the first ways to organize access to network information resources was the creation of open directories of sites, links to resources in which were grouped according to topic. The first such project was the Yahoo.com website, which opened in the spring of 1994. After the number of sites in the catalog increased significantly, the ability to search for the necessary information in the catalog was added. In the full sense, it was not yet a search engine, since the search area was limited only to the resources present in the catalog, and not to all Internet resources.

Link directories were widely used in the past, but have almost completely lost their popularity nowadays. Since even modern catalogs, huge in volume, contain information only about a negligible part of the Internet. The largest directory of the DMOZ network (also called the Open Directory Project) contains information about 5 million resources, while the Google search engine database consists of more than 8 billion documents.

In 1995, search engines Lycos and AltaVista appeared. The latter has been a leader in the field of information search on the Internet for many years.

In 1997, Sergey Brin and Larry Page created the Google search engine as part of a research project at Stanford University. Google is currently the most popular search engine in the world!

In September 1997, the Yandex search engine, which is the most popular on the Russian-language Internet, was officially announced.

Currently, there are three main search engines (international) - Google, Yahoo and, which have their own databases and search algorithms. Most other search engines (of which there are a large number) use in one form or another the results of the three listed. For example, AOL search (search.aol.com) uses the Google database, while AltaVista, Lycos and AllTheWeb use the Yahoo database.

5. Composition and principles of operation of the search system

In Russia, the main search engine is Yandex, followed by Rambler.ru, Google.ru, Aport.ru, Mail.ru. Moreover, at the moment, Mail.ru uses the Yandex search engine and database.

Almost all major search engines have their own structure, different from others. However, it is possible to identify the main components common to all search engines. Differences in structure can only be in the form of implementation of the mechanisms of interaction of these components.

Indexing module

The indexing module consists of three auxiliary programs (robots):

Spider is a program designed to download web pages. The spider downloads the page and retrieves all internal links from that page. The html code of each page is downloaded. Robots use HTTP protocols to download pages. The spider works as follows. The robot sends the request “get/path/document” and some other HTTP request commands to the server. In response, the robot receives a text stream containing service information and the document itself.

• Page URL
• date the page was downloaded
• Server response http header
• page body (html code)

Crawler (“traveling” spider) is a program that automatically follows all the links found on the page. Selects all links present on the page. Its job is to determine where the spider should go next, based on links or based on a predetermined list of addresses. Crawler, following the links found, searches for new documents that are still unknown to the search engine.

Indexer (robot indexer) is a program that analyzes web pages downloaded by spiders. The indexer parses the page into its component parts and analyzes them using its own lexical and morphological algorithms. Various page elements are analyzed, such as text, headings, links, structural and style features, special service HTML tags, etc.

Thus, the indexing module allows you to crawl a given set of resources using links, download encountered pages, extract links to new pages from received documents, and perform a complete analysis of these documents.

Database

A database, or search engine index, is a data storage system, an information array in which specially converted parameters of all documents downloaded and processed by the indexing module are stored.

Search server

The search server is the most important element of the entire system, since the quality and speed of the search directly depend on the algorithms that underlie its functioning.

The search server works as follows:

• The request received from the user is subjected to morphological analysis. The information environment of each document contained in the database is generated (which will subsequently be displayed in the form, that is, text information corresponding to the request on the search results page).
• The received data is passed as input parameters to a special ranking module. Data is processed for all documents, as a result of which each document has its own rating that characterizes the relevance of the query entered by the user and the various components of this document stored in the search engine index.
• Depending on the user’s choice, this rating can be adjusted by additional conditions (for example, the so-called “advanced search”).
• Next, a snippet is generated, that is, for each document found, the title, a short abstract that best matches the query, and a link to the document itself are extracted from the document table, and the words found are highlighted.
• The resulting search results are transmitted to the user in the form of a SERP (Search Engine Result Page) – a search results page.

As you can see, all these components are closely related to each other and work in interaction, forming a clear, rather complex mechanism for the operation of a search system, requiring huge amounts of resources.

6. Conclusion

Now let's summarize all of the above.

• The primary goal of any search engine is to deliver to people exactly the information they are looking for.
• Main characteristics of search engines:
  1. Completeness
  2. Accuracy
  3. Relevance
  4. Search speed
  5. Visibility
• The first full-fledged search engine was the WebCrawler project, published in 1994.
• The search system includes the following components:
  1. Indexing module
  2. Database
  3. Search server

We hope that our master class will allow you to become more familiar with the concept of a search engine and better understand the main functions, characteristics and operating principles of search engines.

The search engine is one of the key layers of the Internet, along with content and the browser. Yandex search engine or similar systems (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and others) allow the user to search for information on the World Wide Web by formulating a query.

The job of a search engine is to find all documents, pages, videos, that is, all content, for this query (keyword or phrase).

Which search engine is the best? Are there alternative options, something other than Google and Yandex? Which Internet search engine is more suitable for scanning English-language sources or, for example, music? This is exactly what will be discussed in the article.

Rating: market leaders

If we talk about the world as a whole, then Google search engine is the most popular search engine. The corporation occupies almost 70% of the market. The second position in the ranking is occupied by Bing (share - 12.26%). The Baidu system is fighting for second place with it (6.48% as of September 2015). From time to time they change places.

So, for example, in 2014, the “forces” were distributed differently: the first place was occupied by Google search engine with 68.69%, the second by Baidu (17.7%), the third by Bing with a market capitalization of 6, 22%.

But global data is very generalized. Which search engine is the best?

In China, for example, a very small percentage of the population scans with Google; the majority uses the domestic Soso system. In South Korea, most residents use their own development - the Internet search engine Naver. However, in the last few months the number of requests in this system has begun to decline rapidly.

In Japan and Taiwan, users are the most likely to use Yahoo!

Rating: Russian-language systems

Which search engine is the best? In Russia, search engine rankings are not at all similar to the global ones. The market leader in the Russian-language segment of the Internet is Yandex, which is used by more than 55% of users.

In second place is Google with a result of 37.6%. According to the LiveInternet service, the coverage of Russian-language search queries on the World Wide Web was distributed as follows:

1. Universal search engines: Google (37.6%), Bing (0.3%), Yahoo! (0.1%).
2. English-speaking and international (AskJeeves, for example).
3. Russian-language search engines: Yandex (56.2%), Mail (5.3%), Rambler (0.5%).

DuckDuckGo

A conversation about alternative search engines should start with the DuckDuckGo search engine. This is a fairly well-known and widespread open source system. DuckDuckGo servers are located in the United States of America. The search results are quite extensive, since the system uses not only its own algorithms, but also the results of some other sources, for example, Wikipedia, the Bing search engine and Yahoo!

The DuckDuckGo search engine ensures maximum security of the user's personal information, privacy and confidentiality. The system does not collect any data about users, does not store history and limits the use of cookies as much as possible.

The difference between DuckDuckGo is that this system does not personalize search results, as other systems do. In Google or Yandex, for example, the user sees only information that is consistent with his preferences. But DuckDuckGo creates a real picture and allows you to get rid of intrusive specific advertising. The search service easily searches for information in foreign languages, while Yandex and Google by default give preference to Russian-language sources, even if the query is entered in English, German or another language.

The system allows you to customize the interface: you can change colors, fonts, links and other parameters in just a few clicks.

This search engine is still far from the giant Google, but the duckling is developing, so it is quite possible that in the future DuckDuckGo will take one of the leading positions. The team has created an excellent product that provides an anonymous, fast and functional search that deserves the user's attention.

NotEvil

This is a system that searches the anonymous Tor network. The search engine is preinstalled in the browser of the same name. Why is notEvil better? It “goes” where Google or Yandex search engines cannot reach. In general, there are a lot of resources on the Tor network that cannot be visited on the “regular” (law-abiding) Internet. This is a kind of platform within the network with its own social platforms, torrent trackers, media, blogs, shopping centers, forums, libraries and so on.

By the way, notEvil is not the only search engine of its kind. There is also Look, which is available by default in the same Tor browser, and TORCH is one of the oldest search engines on the anonymous network.

YaCy

The free search engine YaCy is a completely different approach to organizing searches on the World Wide Web. The system operates on the P2P principle. This means that each computer on which the module is installed independently scans the Internet, and then all the results obtained are collected into a single database that can be used by all YaCy users.

The system is completely independent, autonomous, and ensures the anonymity of each user. YaCy is suitable for supporters of an open Internet that is not influenced by large corporations and government agencies.

The search engine is not yet very useful in everyday life, but in the future it is a worthy alternative to Google, even from the point of view of organizing the process of searching for information.

Pipl

Pipl is a system designed to search for information about a specific person. The developers claim that the search engine’s algorithms search for people more efficiently than Google or Yandex, which are widespread throughout the world.

Priority sources are profiles on social networks, comments, lists of participants, databases where various data about people are published, for example, databases of court decisions. But there is also a drawback. Pipl does not have access to Russian databases, so it will only be useful for searching information about US citizens.

FindSounds

Which search engine is the best? If you need to find music or sounds, then, of course, FindSounds is the best. This is a specialized search engine with a list of tags. Here you can select the desired audio file format or quality. All search results are available for download.

Wolfram|Alpha

This system does not produce pages that contain the information the user needs, but a finished result. For example, maps, graphs, tables, short answers. The service is perfectly suited for calculating data and searching for specific facts. The search engine does not understand all queries yet, but is constantly evolving.

With Wolfram|Alpha it is convenient, for example, to compare parameters for setting up a camera, smartphone or laptop. Also calculate the level of alcohol in the blood (the system asks the user for weight and height, the amount drunk, time, and then reports how long it will take for the alcohol to be completely eliminated from the body).

The tool can convert shoe and clothing sizes, count calories, view exchange rates, or tune a musical instrument.

Dogpile

Dogpile displays results from all common search engines at once. The service uses an improved algorithm and, as the developers assure, generates the best results on the Internet. In addition, there are few advertisements. You can try using Dogpile if the information you need is not found in standard Google or Yandex.

BoardReader

This system searches for information on forums, surveys, question and answer services, and social communities, narrowing the search field to social platforms. You can set filters: language and publication date, site name, etc.

The search engine can be useful to advertising specialists who are interested in the opinion of the audience.

In conclusion

Often alternative search engines are fleeting. They appear as quickly as they die. Most alternative systems today specialize in a narrow niche or test an original algorithm in generating search results.

In the context of describing alternative search engines, the criterion “better” does not at all mean “better in everything.” Each of the services listed above gives a specific user something that is not available in Google or Yandex. In any case, getting acquainted with alternative options (against the backdrop of the fact that the system seems to be practically monopolized by search giants) is interesting and useful for every user.