Web search expanded - hidden search engines which often more useful than the Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo together
Akos Bardoczi
???Open-Source Intelligence |???cybersecurity | ?? legal | ??Google Cloud Platform | ??threat hunting | ?? growth hacker | ?? Python | ???writer and lector | former Cyber Threat Defense Analyst @ IBM
First of all, "best search engine" for general purposes simply isn't exist. I will not write about how to build your own safe lab environment, and I will not write again about essential OPSEC considerations. I will not explain again about why the "surface web" and "deep web" are a complete misinterpretation of the internet sources.
However, I will introduce some lesser-known search engines which might more powerful than Google Search in many cases, depends of scope of your research or investigation and another aspects.
Fact: Google hide a lot of results which technically very relevant due legit reasons. For example results which points to misinformation, disinformation, potentially harmful contents such as
A. revenge porn - harmful to the victims. Just take a quick look and search for "revenge porn" term with or without quotation marks.
B. technically harmful contents - URIs which most probably risky to your device with more and more sophisticated methods. The Google filters not just websites and FTP-folders which host malwares which not identified yet by antivirus venndors and another endpoint detection solutions.
C. many countries deny to Google to render some contents which considered as illegal in a given country or region.
Keep in mind, the mentioned search engines in this post are not necessarily safe/secure, use it carefully, at least isolated lab environment. Theoretically every search engine might be biased and part of global information warfare.
But some of these essential, mandatory tools for a research project and make different contents visible for you.
I created this collection without any comments to avoid my biases. Let's see!
kagi . com
teclis . com
mojeek . com
stract . com
rightdao . com
领英推荐
yep . com
search . brave . com
commoncrawl . org
yandex . com
baidu . com
Yahoo . JP
Important remark: the Japanese Yahoo isn't strongly tied to Yahoo for many years, check the Wikipedia for the historical details.
And one more unique and notable:
openmeasures . io
Formerly named SMAT tools.
It is most probably a semi-pubic Google-initiative. Shows the darkest side of internet, not just web and available from surface web.
Which one is the best based on your best knowledge? Share your experience and this post if you find it useful.