6 Search Engines Better Than Google at Finding Niche Content

Google is the biggest search engine on the internet, but that doesn't mean it always gives you the best results for your searches. These specialty search engines are better than Google at finding exactly what you're looking for.

Over the years, the use of search engine optimization (SEO) has led to skewed results on Google. You'll often find that websites that employ best SEO practices rank higher than those with better content. So invariably, you aren't getting the highest quality search results. But if you look away from Google, there are several other options to search the web and find those high-quality resources.

1. Blog Surf (Web): Search the Best Written Blogs on the Internet

Some of the smartest written content on the internet is on personal blogs and single-writer newsletters. But given how SEO works, Google rarely shows these in its first few pages when you search for anything. Blog Surf is trying to bring order to the blogosphere by curating about 1000 of the best blogs written by a single person and letting you search the directory.

The website uses the anti-SEO MarketRank algorithm to assign points to all blog posts, thus arriving at a blog's overall points too. When you search for a term, the results will show you posts by blog ranking. You can filter your results by period and the reading time for the article (less than 5 minutes, 5-10 minutes, or over 10 minutes).

Blog Surf also provides a directory of all the blogs it has, which you can browse by categories or tags. You can also check Blog Rankings and most popular blog posts to find something to read without searching.

2. Occamm (Web): Refine Search Results by Tags and Get Summary or Previews

Occamm is trying to make a search engine that is more useful than Google with the premise that people don't always know what they should be searching for. So when you search for a keyword on Occamm, you'll see a list of results much like what you get in Google, but along with that, you also get a set of tags.

These tags allow you to refine your search by suggesting what you haven't searched for but still are interested in finding. Select up to four tags, and Occamm will refine your search results to provide information you wanted but didn't know how to search for. Every refinement generates a new set of tags, so you can keep searching better each time.

Occamm also makes it easy to see if the search results are relevant or not before you click the link. Each result provides a short preview of what the link will say, or alternately an AI-generated page summary. You can also see the links related to any link before clicking it. It's time-saving and helpful, especially if you don't know advanced tips, operators and commands for Google Search.

3. YouCode (Web): Best Search Engine for Code and Hackers

You is a new privacy-focused search engine with many other cool features worth checking out on its own. But its code-focussed sub-offering, YouCode, is what has really taken the spotlight recently. Hackers and coders love how easy and fast it is to search for code snippets online.

YouCode highlights code results from popular sources for code like StackOverflow, Github, Code Complete, etc. You'll see previews of posts from these sites in search results, making it much easier to find what you want. You can also see the full post without ever leaving YouCode by opening it on a side panel, where you can also copy code.

This alone would be reason enough to use YouCode over Google for code searches, but there are other nifty hacks too. The website features an AI code assistant, a JSON validator, and a color picker for hexadecimal codes. Hacker Noon has a detailed review of YouCode and why it should be the go-to choice for hackers.

4. Studybyte (Web): Easy Search for Educational Content

When students want to learn about some subject, they need reliable information from trusted educational sources. Studybyte is a cool alternative to Google Scholar, which finds links only from trusted educators.

The site is completely free and does not track you or collect data. However, it does save your previous searches on the same computer, which you can see in the History tab. Studybyte uses a proprietary search algorithm that ranks only educational content on its results page.

5. Memegine (Web): Search for Memes on Reddit Including Text in Images

The internet loves memes. And if you're looking for new or trending memes, they're most likely to be posted on the many meme-based communities on Reddit. Now, while you can search Reddit for the post titles or captions for these memes, you can't search for the text used in the meme itself. And usually, that's what you remember, not the titles.

Memegine wants to fix that. The website is a repository of all memes shared on popular subreddits, which you can search to quickly find the meme you want. Yes, it can read text used in the memes, so you are searching for not just post titles but the meme's content. Memegine does one job and does it well.

6. Needl (Windows, macOS): Search Google, Notion, and Slack for Any File or Chat

In the modern work environment, it's difficult to remember which app or service you used to talk about a project or share a file. Needl is trying to be the universal search for files or chats across popular productivity apps, starting with Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Notion, and Slack.

Once you connect Needl to your accounts, it will take a few minutes to index your files and chats for a full-text search. But after that, it gives blazing fast search results for any keyword across all these services. For a completely free app with no hidden costs, it's remarkably smooth and efficient, with a pleasing interface.

The team says it plans to expand to other productivity services soon and roll out more features.

Download: Needl for Windows | macOS M1 | macOS Intel (Free)

If You Still Want to Use Google, Consider This Charitable Google…

With so many specialist search engines doing a better job than Google at finding things, you'll probably rely on the search giant less and less. But let's face it, you'll still likely want to search on Google enough times.

When that mood strikes, do the world a favor and use Ask.Moe instead of Google. Ask.Moe is a European non-profit that still obtains search results from Google but through clever deals behind the scenes. Your searches are turned into monthly donations to charities like Doctors Without Borders or Electronic Frontier Foundation. You literally won't be doing anything different from the regular Google searches, except it will be through a different site that helps those in need.