1. Stumble Upon – StumbleUpon is a popular social bookmarking site, with hand-picked links sorted by subject. Their search turns up limited results, but those results are always the “best of show”!
2. Cuil – Not many seemed to notice this ambitious search start-up when it launched in July 2008. It has ex-Google engineers behind the scenes, trying to re-think the concept of a search engine in order to be the next-generation Google.
3. Yandex – The number one search engine in Russia is not Google, but Yandex! Even though this site has Russian writing on the landing page, you can still type in English queries and get back English results.
4. DMOZ – Never heard of it? Well, if you’ve pursued the webmaster’s help sections on MSN, Yahoo, and other search engines, you have; it’s the database that many search engines crawl to build up a starting point.
5. Fact Monster – Did Wikipedia discredit your subject as not being of general interest? Fact Monster is a strong competitor to Wikipedia, aimed more at student research. Its results are much more concise and easy to read.
6. TV Tropes – Don’t be fooled by the name – this site is the ultimate Wiki and Google combined for every kind of media, from comic books to stage opera to novels to albums, along with TV shows. It’s a niche, but a fantastic and rich one, with an enthusiastic young teen user base. Getting a link from here means you’re in with the in-crowd for life.

Peter Brittain