All information professionals will be familiar with the ‘Big Four' of search - Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask - even if they may habitually use only one or two of them. Certainly there are many situations where these can provide reasonable results, not least because of the sheer size of their indexes. However, in this article, I will aim to highlight some lesser-known search and metasearch engines which you may find it useful to know about.
There are several reasons for doing this:
It can be more efficient to search with something that may have a smaller, but more focused, index
Some have features that give them an advantage over bigger engines
It's important to encourage, through usage and feedback, the smaller companies so as to prevent monopolies emerging, along with the mind-set that there is nowhere else to go in search terms.
Some of these examples will give swift, consecutive access to at least some of the ‘Big Four' results (although Ask often seems to be excluded) without having to go to their individual sites, thus saving time
I will concentrate on those which offer speed and simplicity, since my working circumstances (a public library) are such that often more or less instant results are demanded rather than in-depth research. However, this is not to imply that you will not get high quality results.
Country-specific search engines
One way to obtain focused results is to use a search engine concentrated on resources from a particular country. As I work in the UK, I will start with a couple of examples from here. Infouno is a metasearch engine with a clean, uncluttered interface. Searches with it are usually productive, with only a few pages of results to check through.
AllSearchEngines is even more unadorned, with just a search box and the word Find to click on. As well as Yahoo and Live, it also draws upon other, smaller engines. Results are displayed clearly, with search terms highlighted and all text in a larger size than is common. I prefer this to Infouno, not only because some non-UK results creep into the former, but because the style of display shows some consideration for visually-impaired users.
Focus on speed and customisation
Zuula is not a metasearch engine as such, since it draws upon a single search engine's results at a time. Its great virtues are its speed, as it employs a tabbed system to move from one search engine to the next without having to retype the search, and the sheer range of engines provided. Currently there are eleven, ranging from Google and Yahoo to the specially-constructed search pages of Mahalo (a little reminiscent of About.com in its approach) and Visvo. All the results are displayed in the same style, rather than that individual to each engine, which may be a little off-putting. A helpful feature is a running display of all your recent searches on the left-hand side of the screen (unless you choose to delete it).
Hakia looks to have interesting potential. An interesting aspect of the site is its Galleries (see Figure 1). These are effectively directories, the topics covered including Famous People; Countries; Companies and Writers/Journalists. These are then further broken down into a range of categories, each of which includes three selected sites. For example, a country's gallery will include Basic Information; Government and Politics; Major Cities; Weather and Maps. Similarly, a writer's gallery embraces such categories as Bibliography; Biography and Timeline; and Speeches and Quotes.
Figure 1.
Equally significant, Hakia features the ability to search ‘Credible Sites' which have been nominated by librarians, although at the moment these are only in the fields of Health and Environment. Top results for a search for ‘lung cancer', for example, came from the National Cancer Institute, National Library of Medicine and Women's Cancer Network. These are alongside the categories All Sites, News and Images, in which your search can automatically be run again. You can also limit your searches to the Credible Sites by employing the URL http://credible.hakia.com.
However, searches for some common terms like ‘climate change' sometimes produced a good set of results from the Credible Sites and at others, bafflingly, no results at all. So, with that caveat and the currently limited number of credible categories, this is an engine to keep an eye on, and one which should be increasingly useful if it continues to develop.
Agent 55 describes itself as ‘the world's most extensive meta search service'. It is certainly that rare thing, a Swedish attempt to break into the search market on an international level, as it has UK, US and International versions. The UK version is at http://uk.agent55.com/?cat=45. One can perform a general search, moving without retyping through the UK versions of Exalead, Excite, Live and Yahoo. You can also search in a few other categories like Best Price, Jobs and Yellow or White Pages.
Figure 2.
Initially, the result set may seem somewhat limited. But, if you activate the Info button, a different and expanded set of tabs appears (see Figure 2). Whichever version of Agent 55 is employed, the basis of it is that results are drawn from varying groups of search engines depending upon the category chosen. You can also edit within a category from the pre-selected engines (i.e. unticking the ones you don't want) or, by signing up, set up a ‘My Agent 55' account which permits the adding of search engines or categories.
The simply enormous range of pre-set search categories (e.g. Answers, Blogs, Social, Videos) is reminiscent of Google's range of tools (which have their own category, so that one can select or de-select from Google Web, Google Groups, Google News etc), tempting one to call it the Google of Metasearch. It certainly shows an effort to attract users of all kinds, with the added element of personalisation to retain them.
Other vertical engines
Mednar is a federated search engine specialising in medical information. This is an engine which seems focused on both quality and flexibility. Looking through the Advanced Search page, the databases utilised are almost invariably from (American) national centres of excellence (e.g. National Institute of General Medical Sciences) or other bodies of high repute (e.g. Cochrane Library).
Interestingly, it is a company named Deep Web Technologies which is behind Mednar. The term Deep (or Invisible) Web seems to have largely fallen out of use, yet the continuing explosion of computer-based data makes the problem of accessing it as pertinent as ever. It would be wonderful if a concerted effort was made along the lines of Mednar in all other subject areas, and then brought together in a unified form. Some of the developments noted in this article are perhaps steps along the way to that position.
Finally, I think it is worth mentioning Clusty. This has been around for several years but, perhaps because of the company's strong involvement in enterprise search, it has never achieved the public recognition of the ‘Big Four', even though Clusty is freely available on the Web. The site's name derives from its technique of automatically clustering search results into categories whose names are drawn from the results themselves (see Figure 3). Clustering of results is not a feature unique to Clusty, but my repeated use of this particular search engine is based simply on the fact that it is clear, speedy and, more often than not, relevant.
Figure 3.
I hope that this article encourages readers to try a few of the examples given to see how they compare with their normal first choice search engine. The field of search seems to encourage ingenuity which, if nothing else, shows that there are always other ways in which information might be unlocked for wider dissemination.
As well as engines which specialise in order to explore a subject more deeply (as with Mednar), there is a significant trend to involve users either through customisation (e.g. Agent 55) or recommendations (e.g. Hakia's Credible Sites). In such ways, search engines are taking certain aspects of the Web 2.0 outlook and coupling it with search capabilities of varying degrees of power. But it is precisely because no one search engine can index all the Web that this variety should be actively embraced.
Having begun his career in academic libraries, Adrian Janes is currently an Information Services Librarian with the London Borough of Havering. In this role, he has particular responsibility for information from both the UK Government and the European Union. He wrote a detailed report on sources for the latter which was published by Free Pint Ltd. in 2007. He is also involved in training and publicising online reference resources and is a regular contributor to Docuticker.
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All information professionals will be familiar with the ‘Big Four' of search - Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask - even if they may habitually use only one or two of them. Certainly there are many situations where these can provide reasonable results, not least because of the sheer size of their indexes. However, in this article, I will aim to highlight some lesser-known search and metasearch engines which you may find it useful to know about. 
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