1. Cuil
Cui is a search engine developed by a team of ex-Googlers and other top notch people from institutions such as IBM and Altavista. Cuil which is said to be a Google killer was launched on 28th July, 2008 and is said to be the world’s largest search engine, indexing ten times as many pages as Microsoft and three times as many pages as Google.
2. Twitter
Twitter is also considered to be a Google killer, but there are just too many “bugs” to get worked out for this to be a Google killer, at least in the short term. However it is a great tool for seo but is not worth anything witout google.
3. Yahoo
Yahoo is seen rolling out a series of changes to their search technology. On the usability side, this search engine helps users to perform the search query while educating them for getting relevant results. As far as the findability side is concerned, Yahoo is now offering Flickr integration, embedded video and other universal search result features which according to Yahoo’s Tim Mayer is the most significant change Yahoo has made to their search business.
4. Wolfram Alpha
It is in everyone’s minds whether Wolfram Alpha will supplant Google? Not in the short term. Google is synonymous to search, as Xerox is for copying. Wolfram appears to be a largely scientific endeavor, but with the right kind of innovation, promotion and funding, it could find an audience in the near future.
5. Facebook
Facebook and Google are two of the fastest growing and largest companies on the internet, and so far Facebook’s popularity has really helped Google to see an increased earnings share. Facebook is complementary and positive for Google so far, but that could change if /when social media such as FaceBook finds a business model and attract ad dollars from other online media.
6. Microsoft’s Bing
Bing is likely to provide direct answers to questions as it makes use of a system similar to the new Wolfram Alpha. They will also concentrate on factors such as local interests, weather and health.
7. Mahalo
This is a web directory launched in May 2007 by Jason Calacanis. This search engine differentiates from the others such as Google and Ask.com by tracking and building hand crafted result sets for many of the presently popular search terms.
8. Quintura
This is a specialized search engine which provides a visual semantic map and is much ahead the other search engines in terms of offering higher quantum of search results in one go. By extracting keywords from the search results it builds a word cloud. Users can refine their entry by clicking words in the cloud and in this way users can narrow the search and find the relevant information faster. “Quintura for kids” is an interesting section available for kids.
9. Powerset
This is a company based in San Francisco, California that is developing a natural language search engine for the internet. This unique search engine can help users find targeted answers to user questions.
10. Clusty
This is a metasearch engine developed by Vivismo that can offer groups of results. Vivísimo is a company built on Web search technology developed by Carnegie Mellon University researchers. Clusty adds new interface and features to the previous Vivisimo clustering web metasearch. There are also several tabs that offer metasearches for jobs, news, blogs and U.S. government info.