Ever hear someone say, “Let me Bing that for you”? Probably not. Google dominates the world of search engines with almost 80% of the market. Although it’s arguably the best tool, other search engines may help you find what you need more quickly and more securely.

Deluxe Search Engines

• DuckDuckGo: Search Engine with Privacy Protection
  Besides having the most adorable name, DuckDuckGo has the reputation of being the most private. When you search using DuckDuckGo, your history isn’t tracked or sold to advertisers.
• Wolfram|Alpha: Search Engine for Well, Just about Everything
  Every time I visit Wolfram|Alpha, I can count on at least an hour of distracted discovery. This site is just insane, with everything from science computations to personal health statistics. It’s just fun to poke around with the crazy questions. Here are some samples:
  • Crack a tough crossword with the Word Puzzle computations.
  • Figure out the date of the third Thursday in April next year.
  • Moving? Figure out the cost of a pound of sugar in your new town.
• AnswerThePublic: Related-Concept Search Engine
  I kind of don’t know how to describe this search engine, but it’s a ton of fun to play with. Enter a word, and the site shares a wheel of responses for everything from comparisons to questions you might ask to lots of other stuff. I don’t know. It’s just cool. Play with it here.
  
• Dogpile: Search Results of Multiple Search Engines
  Different search engines will return different results for the same search. Dogpile runs your inquiry on multiple search engines at once, then ranks the results for relevance and eliminates duplicates.
• Boardreader: Search Forums and Reddit
  When I get an error code in an app or software, I plug the exact wording into a search engine to see what other people have found and fixed. Boardreader gets me straight to the forums where nerds hang out to solve people’s problems.
• Custom Searches: Custom Internet Search Engine for Research, Blogs, News and More
  My speaking buddy Sam Richter is a GENIUS. He created this custom search engine to let you search social sites, blogs and news sources for information you need about your clients and colleagues. Some of his resources are totally free.
• CC Search: Creative Commons Search Tool
  Many people have created images, music and more that you can use and remix. This site lets you search different databases filled with Creative Commons media and more.
• Wayback Machine: Search Engine for the Past
  On the web, nothing really disappears. The Wayback Machine is the archive of the internet. It has been taking snapshots of publicly available sites since 1996. Just put the site into the search engine, and you can click back in time to see the site on different dates. Just for kicks, here’s what this site looked like in 2013 and 2016.
• Bonus! If you want to search Google in ridiculous ways, check out elgoog.im. Oh yeah, and try out Let Me Google That For You when a friend asks you a question that he should know and could Google himself. Heh.