Switchboard.com: The King Of Great Local SearchWritten by Dean Phillips
Forget about local search with Google, Yahoo! or MSN. They don't have a clue. When it comes to great local search, Switchboard.com is king!And no matter how hard Google, Yahoo! and MSN try, when it comes to local search, they'll never even be in same league as Switchboard, because Switchboard.com gets it. Local search is what Switchboard does better than any other search engine or directory on planet--period! You won't believe how easy it is to get incredibly relevant results for virtually anything you can think of--and I do mean anything! Before writing this article, I played around with Switchboard for hours, trying to trip it up. No matter what I typed into search box, Switchboard found it. I typed in "ice cream parlor," no problem. "Old books," no problem. "Post office", no problem. "Italian restaurants," no problem. "Stuffed animals," no problem. "Soft pretzels," no problem. And it not only gave me amazingly relevant local results every time, it gave me businesses web site, directions on how to get there, and what other businesses were nearby. Plus, you can search town directories, by category, classifieds, address and distance--there's even a trip planner!
| | Mamma.com: A Great Alternative To Google And Yahoo!Written by Dean Phillips
In keeping with a promise I made to my readers, here's another great alternative to Google and Yahoo!: Say hello to Mamma.com! Mamma.com is a metasearch search engine. A metasearch search engine actually compiles search results from a variety of sources. When you enter a query at Mamma.com, you actually submit your query to top search engines on Internet, and then merge results eliminating any duplicates. It searches Google, Business.com, Findwhat, About, LookSmart, MSN, Open Directory, plus other leading search engines. Mamma.com has a great power search page where users can choose sources that they query. Since Mamma organizes between index, directory and pay-per-click, users can tailor search engines to match type of information they require. Mamma also have a great tool in its services and tools section that is called Mamma explorer bar--click now, surf later. This lets users (who have downloaded product) drag and drop search results into a window and save their search results for later viewing (or even just to make sure they don't lose track of result). If you have ever done a search and come away with 10 open windows, you can easily imagine how useful this tool is for research.
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