Three new search engines worth checking out

It takes a brave company to set up in business against them, however that's what several intriguing start-ups are doing. The nature of the computing industry is one of giants regularly toppling. Remember Wang, DEC, or even Sun? So why not Google, Microsoft or Yahoo?

Here are three new search engines worth examining, either to use as tools in your workflow or to start considering as targets for search engine optimisation techniques for your business. Just do everybody a favour and never mention Cuil.

For example, if I wanted to search for articles about Google Docs sorted by date, I'd type Google Docs /date. If I wanted to search for pages discussing Google Docs in the context of handheld computers like cell phones, I could type Google Docs /gadgets.

Additionally, and usefully for businesses, anybody at all can as well see SEO data for a site by clicking the SEO link beneath each search results. Unfortunately, this too was less than perfect. When viewing the data for a site I run, Blekko claimed that the site is 'co-hosted with' several other sites I'd never heard of. This is no doubt based on the fact they have in the past shared the site's IP address courtesy of virtual hosting by my ISP. But, it's plain misleading.