Search Engines

Jump to specialist searches

When researching on the internet, try not to limit yourself to one search engine. Search engines regularly modify their algorithms to reduce hijacked results (sometimes works, sometimes makes things worse!) so your favourite today could serve you junk tomorrow (and be back to best next month).
G unfortunately serve results based on what they thought you wanted, ignoring the terms you actually typed. They have also ceased support for the + operator. If I want Reen House, I do not want Greenhouse thank you.
The various search tools have differing sets of web pages and differing algorithms. For difficult subjects it is usually best to use two or three search engines at least. Don't use links to Ask, as they are most often associated with pre-redirects - the built in link to Ask from Opera 11 will hijack you for example- but type in the url personally.
I have found it advantageous to try some of the other search engines below instead of (or as well as) Google.

 !am  for  amazon.com    or   !amuk for amazon.co.uk
 !beer  for beer advocate (type in brewery name or beer name)
 !bookmine  to search the texts of gutenberg books (enclose text in quotes)
 !bwc for  belfry web comics (family friendly version)- Any (none adult) comic on the www.
 !gn   for google news            !imdb for the internet movie database
 !w   for wikipaedia              !yt   for youtube
   (eg !g searchterm will search ggl for searchterm - 
         and ddg add their own filters to the results to improve them)
  You can also add in the box:    sort:date   to sort by date	

Specialist Searches