The internet is a whole lot of nothing without a search engine or two. While the staying power of search engines has never been in question, it's been interesting to see how they've evolved to the point of replacing the address bar.
With more information being published on the internet and different filters for interpreting this information being created, here's a look at a our picks of unique search engines that are making headlines and changing the way we search.
]]> ViewziThere's no question that Viewzi is a search engine of the future with a host of visual features. Viewzi is a visual search engine that's only gotten better since its initial public launch. What makes Viewzi so unique is the various visual viewing options that are available for users to view their search results. From the album and mp3 search view for music, to the 3D Photo Cloud and Celebrity Photo views, there's something for everyone with Viewzi.
SearchMe
Listed as one of Time magazine's best websites of 2008, SearchMe is a slick search engine with an advanced and intuitive interface. Search results are displayed as a gallery of images that allows you to see the page without having to click-through. Do a search on "Obama" and SearchMe will note that you're probably referring to the future presidential candidate Barack Obama. In doing so, SearchMe will present you with several related categories to narrow your search such as Politicians, Democratic Party, US Government, and Political News. SearchMe also provides users with the option to create stacks, or bundles of web pages saved for later. This is a highly unique search engine of the future.
Custom Search Engines
Rollyo is a service that allows you to create your own custom search engine. While we also recommend Google's service that offers the same concept, Rollyo is a little more user friendly. Users can enter up to 25 individual sites to roll into a custom search engine. If you sign up for the service you can make your custom search engines either public or private and add it to your Firefox browser.
Custom search engines are unique and valuable search engines of the future because of what you can do with them. Sarah Perez noted how you can build your own custom search engine with your bookmarks. You can also build your own custom search engine to search through the archives of your competitors and see if they've written about anything you'd like to write about. In essence, you're providing the filters for your very own personalized search engine by only searching the sites you'd like to see results from.
What Did We Miss?
While there are tons of alternative search engines, we'd like to know what you think will be unique search engines of the future. Don't just give out names. Let us know what you're using now and which search engines you expect to see being used a lot more in the future. For more alternative search engine goodness, we recommend heading over and subscribing to AltSearchEngines.
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