Different Kinds of Search Engines

I sort of divide search engines into my own three categories.  There are my favorite kind which pull up everything about anything, there are specialized ones which pull up a particular kind of response, and then there are the phonies.

Lately when I go to a page that doesn't exist anymore, instead of the 404 error message, a wanna be search engine comes up.  But if you put in a legitimate search term, it spills back a bunch of marketing garbage.  Those are annoying.  It is hard for me to imagine how people can be making money by putting those up, but they must be, or they would not do it.

Then you have search engines which bring up specific kinds of information.  For example, once when I put the term "Rosetta Stone"  into Yahoo's search it gave me information about a group of musicians.  When I put it in a business-oriented search engine, it brought up language instruction software.  When I put it into an all-purpose engine, that one finally brought up the ancient Egyptian artifact that I was researching.   

So when looking for media files, something like Video & Music on Rapidshare might work, but if you want something else there are resources for finding the best place to look. I put the term "specialized search engines" into the Google search box and many lists with thousands of specialized search engines came up. Wikipedia explains that these are called vertical search engine. So I Googlized the term "vertical search engines" and learned that another name for them is vortals.

I love learning new words.

Comments

[Nick]

I just realized my purpose in life: to build a vortal. No wait, make it a hortal. Or better yet - what's the word for diagonal search engines, can it be a dortal? I think I can make a dortal.

[Janet Ann]

Hi, Rick. I followed you back to Qondio and, well, started following you.

Since this post I started using the allegedly non-invasive search engine called StartPage by ExQuick. I like Wolfram Alpha, but it doesn't pull up enough of the right stuff yet to meet all my search needs. Wolfram is cool, though. Be sure to check out my gardening blog:

I built this really neat thing:

http://www.drann.us/anns_aerogarden_updates/2010/02/recycled-shower-doors.html