Beyond Google ?

Google has become the default internet search engine and for good reason but there are other alternatives out there which might you of you are using the web for research purposes.

Please email other suggestions in for posting (smcvey@nd.edu.au) or make a comment on this post...

Google Scholar
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar aims to sort articles the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each article, the author, the publication in which the article appears, and how often the piece has been cited in other scholarly literature.


Intute
Intute is search service created by a network of UK universities and providing resources specifically for education and research. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in our database and write high quality descriptions of the resources.


Scirus
Scirus is the most comprehensive science-specific search engine on the Internet. Driven by the latest search engine technology, Scirus searches over 450 million science-specific Web pages, enabling you to quickly:

•Pinpoint scientific, scholarly, technical and medical data on the Web.
•Find the latest reports, peer-reviewed articles, patents, pre prints and journals that other search engines miss.
•Offer unique functionalities designed for scientists and researchers.

Infomine
About 120,000 research university level sites, heavily annotated, and cataloged. Divided into several databases by subject.

And for something a little different try talking directly to your peers...

getCITED
getCITED is an online, member-controlled academic database, directory and discussion forum. Its contents are entered and edited by members of the academic community. By putting its content in the hands of its members, getCITED makes it possible to enter in and search for publications of all types. This means that, in addition to the books and articles accessible with other databases, book chapters, conference papers, working papers, reports, papers in conference proceedings, and other such research outlets can all be entered and then searched for within getCITED.


Is what you are looking for no longer there ?

You need to travel backwards in the 'Wayback Machine'

Providing access through the Internet Archive, the 'Wayback Machine' can look at 85 billion archived web pages. If your URL is no longer valid plug it in here and see what it did look like at various points in time from 1996 onwards.


Or try this comprehensive list of search tools by Gary Price...

Research Beyond Google: 119 Authoritative, Invisible, and Comprehensive Resources