Mainstream Search Tools

Google Groups
Google groups is a great resource for crowd sourced answers. No matter what the topic, there's an answer – and group – out there.

BoardReader
BoardReader indexes just forums, message boards and Reddit.
It can provide a wider range of results than Google Groups. Quality may be another matter.

DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo does not track or store anything about your searches. They do not profile users and show all users the same search results for a given search term. DuckDuckGo emphasizes getting information from the best sources rather than the most sources, generating its search results from key crowd-sourced sites such as Wikipedia.

Google is our webmaster's preferred search web search site.
For better results, click on the the gear icon when searching and check the following settings...
- SafeSearch
- SafeSearch can be turned on or locked on as needed.
- Results per page
- We set it to 100. Scrolling down to the middle or end of the page can give you less popular, but possibly better results.
- Private results
- Google tracks what you search for and adjusts results based on past searches. If sharing a computer among multiple people, best to turn this Off.

Wolfram/Alpha
Wolfram|Alpha is a fundamentally different way to get knowledge and answers, processing questions rather than matching specific words.
Type in "the population of San Francisco" and it returns "825,863 people (country rank 14th) (2012 estimate)".
Also great at handling math problems. Entering "1 acre-foot per year in gallons per day" returns "892.7 gal/day (gallons per day)".
Not all search sites default to their safe search option, or even have one.
Best to check out search sites before using them for homework or in the classroom.


Baidu
Baidu is the Chinese equivalent of Google.
While the site is in Chinese, it will accept English language search terms and has both text and image searches.
See the world as China sees it.

Yahoo Search
Back when the Internet was starting, Yahoo was the go-to search web site. Yahoo still maintains an independent web search engine that provides good results.
Related Topics ...
Other Areas To Check Out ...
● Setting up an On-Line Community
● Networks for Teachers By Teachers (sampler)
● Parents and Kids Together
● Example Virtual Libraries
● Search Tips & Strategies
● Media Search Tools