These days, large technology companies are being investigated in the United States and Europe for abuse of a dominant position. As we already mentioned in Linux AdictosIn the case of Google, they are concerned about the manipulation of search engine positioning in order to privilege their own products or those who pay for advertising.
Beyond any manipulation, There are reasons why a website or other content does not appear in search engines. It may not be possible to connect with the usual protocols, that its managers do not want to appear in the search engines or that the structure of the page does not follow the search engine optimization guidelines.
In this post we will see some alternative search engines that we can use to find it.
Beyond Google. Alternatives to consider
I want to make it clear that these search engines do not give access to illegal or prohibited content. As I said at the beginning, these are things that for technical reasons do not appear in the results of traditional browsers
General content
Internet Archive
Not all content on the Internet are web pages. And, many times web pages disappear from the servers. Internet Archive allows you to search through millions of text, audio, video files and copies of web pages that are no longer online. All available content is under the public domain or some type of license that allows its free distribution.
Books and newspapers
Gutemberg project
No content search list on the Internet can be complete without the Gutemberg project. It has a catalog of 60000 books that can be read online or on devices like the Kindle.
All its content is available for the public domain (according to the laws of the United States), covers several languages and includes both fiction and educational or scientific texts.
WWW Virtual Library
The title and the home page are in Spanish, but when you enter the search engine, you will have to manage in the language of Shakespeare. It is one of the search engines oldest of its kind and has resources for subjects, agriculture, mathematics, economics and other scientific disciplines. Its creator was Tim Berners-Lee, also creator of the World Wide Web.
Elephind
This search engine specializes in searching newspapers. Its home page claims to find information on 199,325,105 topics in 4,235 newspapers. The updating of its catalog is constant.
Directory of Open Access Journal
From Sweden comes this search engine which allows free access to more than 120000 publications covering topics in areas such as technology, science, humanities and medicine. Its content is managed by the community and is made up of 100% content that was open access from the moment it was published.
Alternatives to Wikipedia
The Jimmy Wales project can be a good alternative if you are looking for an introduction to scientific or cultural topics. But, if we talk about politics or historical events, the content is deeply ideological. The ideological sector that has the most volunteers manages to impose its point of view. That is why it is good to have other options. Unfortunately, its content is in English.
Infoplease
Infoplease defines himself as un reference and learning site, combining the content of an encyclopedia, dictionary, atlas, and various almanacs loaded with statistics, facts, and historical records.
Its content, in English language, is managed by professional editors.
scholarpedia
scholarpedia it is written and maintained by academics. All its content is reviewed by professionals in each discipline before being published. Its goal is to provide an in-depth academic treatment of topics within the fields of mathematics and science, including the physical, biological, behavioral, and social sciences.
To restrict the duration of this article I decided not to include search engines that can only be accessed using the Tor network such as ahmia. Nor could I speak of LibraryGenesis because, despite being an excellent resource to find books, their authors have a lot to object to downloading them without paying for them.
I would have liked to include citizendium, a fork of WIkipedia powered by one of its co-founders and intended to promote responsibility for content by making publishers use his real name. But, the project is in a transition stage and is considering ceasing to be open to editing and free.
DuckDuckGo
startpage_com
metager_org
qwant_com
ecosia_org
yacy_net
seax_me
....
not everything in google
regards
En Linux Adictos Many of those search engines have already been talked about. And the titles have to be telegraphic, I can't make a list.