Share what you know with millions of people
Focus is the best place to turn what you know into remarkable content
What are some good alternatives to Google for search engines?
Best Answer
Bing (and DuckDuckGo) would be your largest options. Bing is generalist and usually targeted by the same people Google is; DDG focused on tech and security conscious people. There are format-specific search engines for videos, books or locations, but Google dominates those areas too.
If you are looking for attention, you might want to look at other options than search engine marketing: social media, off-line marketing, sponsoring.
If you are in the US, I always recommend that clients test superpages, syndicated business listings that are found by customers looking for phone numbers online. Advertising info @ supermedia.com - they used to be owned by Verizon, not sure what the situation is but they are not a ripoff like most other non-Google advertising
I definitely second what Caty said. In general you can use Bing, Yahoo, Ask, etc... but there are also large niche sites like WebMD that are great for very specialized searches.
eHow is great for content if you are looking for articles or just general information.
However, the way Google is ranking pages/businesses is changing. They now want to make searches even more relevant by including reputation (reviews) and social authority (social media presence) into their PageRank search results ranking determination.
Why do you feel Google's results are meaningless?
Events
- Dos and Don'ts of Small Business Marketing May 29 @ 11 am PT
- Lead Nurturing 202: The Next Generation May 31 @ 11 am PT
- The Tricks to Paid Media June 6 @ 11 am PT
- Display Advertising for Brand Awareness June 20 @ 11 am PT
Related Activity
There are a lot of different alternatives to Google. Off of the top of my head I'd recommend Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com for most general searches. However, there are many search engines that specialize in specific kinds of searches. For example, WebMD is considered a search engine for health related matters and the ultimately creepy Spokeo is considered a search engine for people. I found a pretty detailed list on Wikipedia that you might want to check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
Ecosia (http://ecosia.org/) is another interesting search engine that I learned about not too long ago. Claiming to be the "green" search engine, they donate at least 80% of their profits to WWF's efforts in saving the Amazon rainforest.