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5 Bespoke search engines that could make your life easier

Google is very useful. It is, after all, the world’s most popular search engine, and the term ‘to Google’ is pretty much used by everybody when looking something up on the internet. However, Google can’t tell you everything, and if you want more specific results, sometimes you need to look elsewhere.

You won’t necessarily find the answers on any of the other ‘major’ search engines like Bing either, but instead, you’ll have to go for industry-specific bespoke search engines that will tell you exactly what you wanted to know.

Here are five of the very best:

1. CC Search

CC Search is a massive search engine that should be more widely known (and widely used) than it is. The short version is that it should be your first and only stop on the hunt for nearly any type of copyright-free content.

If you create content of any kind for the internet, whether it be for your blog or any of the social media platforms, then this is for you. If you need music for a video, a featured image to sit proudly at the top of your latest blog post, you’ll find it here.

Like all brilliant things, it works very simply and displays results marked as Creative Commons from platforms such as Soundcloud and Flickr.

2. Kayak

From one that is little known to one you may have even seen adverts on TV for. The main page of this bespoke holiday search engine has changed its look over time, but the search for hotels, flights, and car hire over 100’s of sites are still the same.

Like all good search engines, on Kayak you can narrow criteria without too much messing about or looking for extra keywords, and it has had a major influence on how other similar sites look and work. You can also personalize your results so that you only see services from your ‘favorite’ providers.

3. Octopart

The next one on the list is even more specific to the electronics industry. Electronic engineers, who design pretty much every piece of technology we have, including whatever you are reading this on, need specific search engines to sources the right components. Octopart has a comprehensive list of components (and could be considered better than using digikey search), which will give them what they were looking for.

4. TinEye

This one is very useful when it comes to your interactions on social media and other sites. Tin Eye is a reverse image search engine that helps finds the source of an image on the internet. You can use it to check if the profile picture you see online is really that person or if it’s something else entirely.

If it turns out the very appealing picture of the person who sent the ‘follow’ request is actually cropped from a stock image, you might well want to steer clear.

5. Wolfram Alpha

This is a very data-driven search engine more suited to academics than casual users. WolframAlpha is designed to deliver expert knowledge on science, tech, and mathematics. If the answer you were looking for seems a bit too cerebral for Google, then this search engine is probably the one you need.

James Daniels

James Daniels is a freelance writer, business enthusiast, a bit of a tech buff, and an overall geek. He is also an avid reader, who can while away hours reading and knowing about the latest gadgets and tech, whilst offering views and opinions on these topics.