Peek - Search with a preview

This site is simple, and works much like Google and others. But it gives you a Thumbnail view of the site next to the text, which is a very nice touch.

The returns look very similar to what I get on Google, which makes me suspect they are running a Google search in the background, or using Google as a "spider" somehow.

http://www.peekengine.com/

Kartoo - Visual Search

Kartoo is one of the search engines on one of the lists I linked to earlier. They offer a very intersting interface that shows how pages are linked together, their relationships, and which keywords they share. The image I have linked to is a quick search I did on my company name. It found my personal site, my LinkedIn page, as well as several contest sites we were involved with.

Interesting. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure how this is useful, but it is certainly neat and I'll give it try in the future.

Google and Yahoo aren't the only search engines.....

When most people think of search engines, most people tend to go to one or two specific sites. Google is so common that it's become a verb. Like Xerox, the brand is so popular it's become a generic term for an online search. And it does a good job, but there are many, many other search choices, many of which are specific to a type of search. You can search for people, search for images, or even get a graphical return that shows the relationships between web pages that contain similar keywords. Interested? Here are two sites that list hundreds of alternatives, grouped by the type of search being done.

http://www.philb.com/whichengine.htm
http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html

I will be highlighting some of my favorites over the next few days,click here for my impressions.