Google Comparisons

Many specialty tools provide special features. Design activities that make comparisons between Google and these tools.

Google Game Idea

You've been hired as the Director of Advertising for one of the following companies. You were hired because the company is looking for ways to compete with Google. Make a comparison and recommendation.

• General Search Tools
  • Ask and AskKids. This tool is question-based, so it's effective for specific questions.
  • Bing. Microsoft's search tool.
  • Dogpile. A metaengine that searches popular search tools like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
  • DuckDuckGo. Like Google, but with fewer ads.
  • FamHoo. Locates "safe" sites with a family friendly search engine.
  • Kartoo. Provides a nice overview and images.
  • KwMap. Provides a great visual showing relationships among words and a keywords list.
  • Quintura and Quintura for Kids. Provides a nice word cloud.
  • Search Credible. Searches many well-known websites. Good for student projects.
  • Sweet Search. Designed for students.
  • Twurdy. Provides search results by reading level.
  • Yahoo. A longtime favorite.
  • Yippy. Formerly Clusty, it's a good tool for unusual requests.
• Visual Search Tools
  • Behold. Shows you images you can use in your own projects.
  • InstaGrok. Resources are visually represented.
  • Oolone. Provides a screen shot of each result. Search for a topic such as wind energy.
  • Qwiki. Provides an overview, images, and audio. Search for a topic such as lizard.
  • Spacetime. Shows results as full screens.
  • Yometa. Provides results from Google, Yahoo, and Bing
• Deep Web Tools
• Complete Planet. Search tool for the deep web.
• Internet Archive. Explores public domain and open source resources. I was able to find The Care of Books from 1901. I can also find textbooks from the 1800s.
• RefSeek. Returns more academic results than Google.
• SimilarSite Search. Provides websites that are similar to one you already use.
• Reference Tools
  • Finding Dulcinea. Provides great starting points for educational materials.
  • Mashpedia. This tool provides real-time mashups of topics.
  • Wikipedia. Use the external links for quality information. Use the images for materials students can reuse.
  • WolframAlpha. Provides great math and science resources.