30 top-notch vertical search engines

80% of all internet sessions start with a search engine enquiry (and for most people, that means Google).

But, when it comes to specialist subject areas, we often want to be searching within an engine that gives us what we want in more detail.

For lack of a better term, these are called vertical search engines, and play an important role in how customers interact with products and information.

They're also great tools to have up your sleeve if you're a comms pro, giving you extra searching power.

Here are 30 examples worth bookmarking:

Flights / Travel

1. SkyScanner.net - the leading flights search engine, providing information about all carriers to help you find the best deal

2. Momondo.com - Very similar to SkyScanner and with an added 'current searches' widget to see what flights other people are searching for

3. DoHop.com - Nice and simple way to search for flights, hotels and rental car

Blogs

4. IceRocket.com - Searches for content from blogs, Twitter, Facebook and more

5. BlogPulse.com - Blog-specific search engine searching through more than 170 million blogs

6. Wikio.com - Wikio's top blogs section is a great place to start a topic-specific blogs and content

Images

7. TinEye.com - a reverse image search engine - this finds our where an image came from, how it is being used and where you can find the best resolution version

8. PicSearch.com - Searches through more than 3 billion online photos 

People

9. Pipl.com - Search for people all over the world from a simple interface
10. 123people.com - Aggregates public information from a number of sources to give a spread of person-specific information

Forums

11. BoardReader.com - The best free discussion board and forum search tool out there

Music

12. MixTurtle.com - Basic music search engine by artist and / or song title
13. SongBoxx.com - Search over 7,000,000 tracks from the one location
14. Music-Map.com - Type in your favourite artist and then a map of similar artists will be returned (very cool)
15. AudioGalaxy.com - Search for and save your playlists in the cloud from this very slick site

Audio and Video

16. PodScope.com - The web's leading podcast search directory
17. Blinkx.com - Search over 35 million hours of video

Resources

18. SlideFinder.com -Instead of starting a new presentation slide from scratch, see if the one you need is here
19. FileDigg.com - Search for files by type e.g. .ppt and .pdf etc

Domain names

20. Panabee.com - A great way to search for website domain names and generate names if you are struggling for ideas
21. NameNinja.com - Another brainstorming tool to discover domain names

Icons

22. Iconfinder.com - Great for finding different file versions e.g. .png and .ico
23. Iconseeker.com - A standard icon search engine
24. IconArchive.com - One of the most comprehensive icon search engines on the web, includes really useful sub-category search

Private search

25. DuckDuckGo.com - This engine allows you to search for sites without bring tracked at the other end

Similar websites

26. SimilarSites.com - Search for sites similar to the ones you love in a simple way

All-rounders

27. Blekko.com - Uses 'slashtagging' to narrow down your results
28. KeoTag.com - Tag search multiple search engines for the latest content
29. Scour.com - A social search community
30. Greplin.com - Another social search engine with desktop capability

While some of these are better alternatives to Google and the other major engines, for the most part, the big boys do it incredibly (incredibly) well.

The blog post I never thought I'd write (and publish)

Like a lot of people, I was rocked by the news of Trey Pennington's passing this week.

And, like a lot of people (I imagine), I've read a lot of different perspectives on it and the broader issue of coping with your inner demons.

Jason Mollica wrote a post which inspired the one that follows here.

My mate Sian Meades also wrote something a little while back which has encouraged this too.

You won't find anything particularly ground-breaking here, just some things I've learnt about coping with an illness that has been both a blessing and a curse.

What, me? Depressed? 

I've suffered from depression for about nine years.

It's been a very on and off thing with only a small portion of that time spent in the 'deep fog'.

Although, off is never really off, perhaps 'nagging' and 'heavy' are the two extremes and then everything else in between.

What impact has it had?

I don't know the difference (now) so it is hard for me to say, but I like to think it has made life more interesting (good and bad) for me and the people near me.

In all honesty, I think it has knowingly and unknowingly impacted on others more than it has impacted on me - especially the people I truly love - I accept its ups and downs as a matter of course, but I'm not sure other people do or can (not for lack of trying though).

And, I've pushed a lot of people away to shield them from the pain I've experienced - I don't really want to do that anymore - and I don't want other people to follow suit.

Instead of itemizing the adventure I've had, I thought it would be more useful to highlight some of the warning signs I didn't notice early on, but could only recognise after the event.

And then, how understanding myself (and the illness) has made it manageable.

The warning signs

The biggest and scariest warning sign (that I only can see now) was my initial inability to understand the imbalanced contest taking place between the rationale and emotional parts of my brain.

The transition from happy to deflated was so gradual for me that I just kept putting my deteriorating outlook down to events going on around me - in other words, I couldn't distinguish between 'normal' suffering and a more systemic problem.

And I began to indulge in acts of escapism with more fervor and passion than ever before - it was the only way I could break free from the nagging fuzzy outlook.

Escapism quickly turned into self-destruction, mainly because it was the only way to inject some feeling into my world.

In short, something was wrong when I couldn't find any single thing wrong - the whole thing just wasn't right - I wasn't 'me'.

Coping, improving and managing

How people choose to deal with depression is a very personal thing.

We're all made up differently and what works for one person may not work for another.

The key for me has been understanding how depression works and manifests itself.

At times it owns you, and at other times, you own it.

The best (and only) way of managing it is to accept it - that's 95% of the battle.

From a strictly practical perspective, take a look at the depressions symptoms checklist and be honest in your own assessment against that criteria.

Even if you're not sure if you 'qualify', go see your GP and start the conversation - they can help you with the next stage if required.

I chose to tell a few close friends and work colleagues at the time so they knew I wasn't at my best but wanted to be - and while my improvement in their eyes might have only been subtle, it was a catalyst for continued improvement and growth.

In a way, I hope writing and publishing this has a similar effect.

I like waking up each day, and it upset me when didn't feel that way for a period, so this experience has only heightened my appreciation of the good stuff.

And, I live in hope that the deepest depths of the illness don't return, but after having come through different levels of it on so many different occasions, a quiet confidence resides inside of me now - I know I'll always be OK.

I hope I never lose that feeling.

If you need any help in identifying the symptoms, or just need to be told 'you'll be OK too', get in touch - it would be a waste to not share my experience from a subject I've come to know a fair bit about.

And thanks for reading this post - it is something I have wanted to write for a while now - this is a part of who I am.

A life living in denial in not really a life - confront, accept and adjust - they're the three steps that have helped me.

Adam

If you want to send me an an email, click here.