SEO Marketing

25 Advanced Search Engines (Other Than Google)

28 March 2022 by
Advanced Search Engines 1

It may come as a shock to learn that Google is not the end-all be-all search engine. There are many search engines out there, much more than the 25 included in this list.

Learning how Google stores and utilizes the information you search for may lead to seeking out a different, more private search engine.

Which search engine is right for you? It depends on what you are searching for and what you are interested in finding.

Are privacy and tracking options important to you? Are you looking for academic material or strictly for video clips? The search engines you use can help better define your search, and get you the answers you need more quickly.

Thankfully, you have options! Keep reading to find which search engine best fits your needs.

25 Advanced Search Engines (Other Than Google)
  1. Bing is one of the most-used search engines behind Google. Some users find it more visually pleasing than the info up front layout that Google uses. Bing, while similar to Google’s layout, offers trending images while searching.
  2. Yahoo is another popular search engine, which boasts a different layout than other search engines, including top news headlines and recommended articles.
  3. Baidu, which is the most popular search engine in China, has a similar design layout to Google, but is heavily censored.
  4. Yandex is Russia’s answer to Google. Powered by AI, they utilize cookies, and their machines are constantly learning in order to provide better search results for their users.
  5. DuckDuckGo is among the most popular alternatives to googling. DuckDuckGo is the search engine for those who want privacy. They do not track and consistently block access from others trying to obtain your search history.
  6. Swisscows is notable for its privacy settings, and does not store your data. Many parents utilize Swisscows and find their family-friendly privacy policies ideal for their children’s internet experience.
  7. Ask.com formerly known as Ask Jeeves is a laid-back and user-friendly search engine.  Ask runs a “question-answering based search engine.”  Ask a question, get an answer, simple as that!
  8. Ecosia appeals to the environmentally conscious. With every search you type in, Ecosia helps give back while you do your research by planting trees where they are needed across the world. They are privacy-friendly and utilize Bing and their own algorithms to bring you your results.
  9. Startpage offers an interesting service as it does not track your history or cookies. But it goes a step further in that you can install a Startpage plugin and keep using Google and its search engine, without the potential privacy issues.
  10. Pinterest, while it may not seem like a search engine, is a massive database of images and other creative content. Although a (free) account is required, you can pin designs and photos into categories, making repetitive searches obsolete.
  11. Keyhole sets itself apart as a search engine by allowing users to search the World Wide Web by keywords, hashtags, or @mentions. Keyhole can show you how a piece was shared across platforms and offers a live campaign tracker. Keyhole utilizes social listening online and provides analytics to help improve your online marketing strategies.
  12. Flickr’s advanced search specializes in all things media. Whether you are looking for photos, videos, illustrations, you can find a variety of content with what Flickr offers.
  13. SlideShare is a major database of slideshow presentations. If you missed your latest conference or are interested in brushing up on some topics, Slideshare may be a perfect search engine for you.
  14. TinEye is a reverse image search engine. You plug in the picture and TinEye will compile a list and show you where the image has been shared around the internet.
  15. LinkedIn Answers Search can help you find keywords used on the site. It’s a great place to seek advice from experts in your field or ask their staff questions.
  16. Social Searcher can track keywords and social metrics. This search engine can also show you a specific hashtag or @mention all in one list. This is great for monitoring your growth as a brand and on social media, and see what people are talking about.
  17. Wolfphram Alpha: some may remember this search engine from seeking help in understanding difficult mathematic equations. But Wolphram Alpha goes a step further as a search engine. The website offers expert knowledge in a variety of fields, and is a hub of helpful videos and examples to explain any question you may have. It is privately owned and doesn’t track your searches.
  18. Boardreader offers a unique search engine perspective. With Boardreader, you can search message boards and forums specifically, which is helpful with a narrow search.
  19. Yippy is a search engine that offers private browsing. It doesn’t overload the user with results, which some may find more appealing in the never-ending search for information.
  20. Buzzsumo offers a unique perspective as you can search by topic or by competitor. This search engine is helpful to users and marketers, as they find which article topics were shared most and can see articles related to the topics or keywords they are searching.
  21. CC Search, also known as Creative Commons Search, aims to show licensed works in public domain. They help users find and share creative knowledge straight from the creators themselves. If you or your company want to avoid copyright claims, using CC Search may work for you.
  22. Amazon is rising in popularity as a search engine as well. Keep in mind that their search results are geared towards sales, but can be a great resource for research as well as for purchasing.
  23. Gigablast is a huge database of billions of indexed webpages. This cryptographically-protected search engine is private, and has a directory of categories you can search from. It’s free and open source, with an advanced index search as well.
  24. WebCrawler is a beloved search engine, as it was the very first to provide full-text searches. Now WebCrawler pulls from other major search engines, but it remains a useful facet for crawling meta-data.
  25. The Internet Archive which features The Way Back Machine, is a collection of content and webpages from around the internet, uploaded by people around the world. There are billions of pages within this engine.

Privacy concerns are not the only reason users may seek out other advanced search engines other than Google. Some users have a more specific search request or want to search a database without the possibility of copyright claims.

From Swisscows, known for its privacy settings, to TinEye, an advanced image search engine, there are many search engines that hold their own against Google, by offering niche or advanced features.

Really it comes down to which search engine best suits your needs.

Which search engine is your favorite and why? Let me know in the comments below!

SEO Marketing | Web Marketing

IMAGE SEO & How To Correctly Name Your Photos

11 May 2017 by
IMAGE SEO & How To Correctly Name Your Photos

SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION) – THE PROCESS OF OPTIMIZING A WEBSITE TO GENERATE THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF ‘ORGANIC’ (NON-PAID) VISITS FROM SEARCH ENGINES.

THE CORRECT WAY TO NAME YOUR PHOTOS FOR IMAGE SEO

The question on many photographers’ lips these days is: How do I get seen in a sea of similar websites?

Correctly naming your image files for optimal SEO, is a great way to start.  Google can’t analyze the actual content of an image to tell what it is depicting, and whilst this technology is most certainly on the way, it’s nowhere near ready just yet. Instead, they rely on several indicators on a web page to tell them what the photo is all about.  One of these is, as you might expect, the filename of the photo.  You should never upload photos to your website with the standard camera-applied filename, like DSC_9764.jpg!  This tells Google nothing at all and its content.

When Google knows more about the content of your image, it can include it in Image Search (click the image tab at the top of a Google search page), and sometimes the top images even show right at the head of a regular search page.  Not only does it help people find your photos directly, but it also helps Google understand the content of the page that you posted the photo on, helping that page show up higher in regular search results for the subject.

DASH OR UNDERSCORE?

Instead of the default filename, you should be describing the contents of the image in 3-8 words.  Importantly, you should be separating the words in your filename with a dash (hyphen), and not an underscore!

(THESE-ARE-DASHES)

(THESE_ARE_UNDERSCORES)

The inner workings of Google’s search engine algorithm are a closely guarded secret, but every now and again we get a little snippet of detail from one of their representatives on the Google Webmasters blog.  For some reason there’s a lot of misinformation circulating around the web on this topic, but Google’s Matt Cutts, has clearly stated that dashes (hyphens) are the way to go on this one. Whilst Matt Cutts does say that the SEO difference between the two is relatively minor, that means there is a difference.

STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH – DASH NOT UNDERSCORE!

EXAMPLES

– WRONG -> DSC_9807.jpg  

This tells Google nothing at all.

– WRONG -> blackcat.jpg  

Blackcat is not a word.

– WRONG -> black-cat.jpg

Whilst this technically does describe the image (assuming it is actually a black cat), have a think about how many photos of a black cat you’d be putting yourself up against on the internet?  Millions, I would imagine.

– WRONG -> a-black-cat-under-a-red-car.jpg

There’s no need to include stop words in your filename (a, the, it, to, etc.). Keep it short and simple.

– WRONG -> black_cat_under_red_car.jpg

Nope, the underscore isn’t a recognized word separator. To Google, this just reads as blackcatunderredcar.jpg! No good.

– CORRECT -> black-cat-under-red-car.jpg

Now we’re getting somewhere! Descriptive, and with the correct separators and no stop words.

USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

Since the filename helps Google understand the content of the page that the photo is on, you can use this to boost your search rankings for specific topics.

EXAMPLE

You are a wedding photographer from San Francisco and on the About page of your website, there is a headshot of you next to your biography.

WRONG -> joe-blogs-portrait.jpg

CORRECT -> joe-bloggs-san-francisco-wedding-photographer.jpg.

SHOULD YOU RENAME EXISTING IMAGES?

If you’re using a photo portfolio service like Photoshelter, SmugMug (get a 20% discount here), or Zenfolio, with hundreds or thousands of images, there’s little point renaming all of those files to make the names descriptive. There are obviously some organizational benefits to a photographer’s standard archive file naming scheme when photos are hosted in large volumes. Hopefully with these kinds of online portfolio archive services, you’re making use of all the other SEO options to optimize them.

The ideal setup is to use a blogging platform like WordPress, to create a new blog post every time you upload a new collection of images to your archive or online print store.  In that blog post, you include a few of the images from the collection, and those are the images that you optimize with a proper name for SEO purposes.  With properly optimized page content, and images, you’ll rank higher in more search results and bring people to the blog post.  That’s when you can let them know that a full collection can be viewed on your archive site, or prints purchased from your print store.

But what if you’ve got existing blog images that weren’t correctly named?  WordPress doesn’t natively offer a way to rename images, but you can use the plug Media File Renamer. What you have to remember, though, is that the filename is part of the direct URL to that image.  If you do decide to change the filename, you’ll be altering the URL and it will reset any SEO juice that this image might have already gathered over time.

If you already have images that show up often in Google Image searches, you definitely don’t want to go renaming these ones.  Choose wisely when tackling this question… my thought is that if you have a relatively new blog of only a few months old, you can rename the files with this plugin and probably get more long-term benefit from it than a short-term disadvantage.  For older blogs, it’s probably not worthwhile.