Summary

  • While Google Search is extremely effective for general searches, specialized search tools can be more effective for specific requirements as they can do things that Google can’t (or won’t).
  • Five examples of these specialized search tools are:
  1. Shodan: This is known as “Google for computers” as it indexes and maps all devices connected to the internet, from smart TVs to industrial systems, and makes this information searchable.
  2. Wayback Machine: Allows users to view old versions of websites and filter archived pages by file type, URL pattern, and specific content.
  3. PublicWWW: Users can search across 477 million web pages to find sites using the same analytics tools, payment gateways, or frameworks.
  4. Grep.app: This free tool lets users search public GitHub repositories using regular expressions to find code examples.
  5. SearXNG: This open-source, privacy-focused engine aggregator searches over 230 sources while stripping out trackers and cookies.
  • All of these tools provide functionality that isn’t possible with Google, while also specializing in specific use cases.

By Tashreef Shareef

Original Article