We're all familiar with Google and Bing, but did you know that there are lots of other tools you can use to search the internet? On this page, you'll find links to selected search engines that can give you different kinds of search results, help protect your privacy, and even help protect the environment. You'll also find a few words about A.I. chatbots.
If you need assistance with developing effective search statements or evaluating the information you find with these tools, contact one of your Campus Librarians or connect to the Ask-a-Librarian service: Chat | Email | Text
This search engine pledges not to track your searches or save any data about you. You'll see fewer ads, and you can customize the look and feel of the page. Search results come from Bing and a number of other sources. DuckDuckGo AI Chat offers anonymous access to several A.I. models.
This search engine donates its profits to tree-planting organizations in countries around the world. Searches are powered by Google and Bing.
Ekoru donates 60% of its revenue to organizations dedicated to cleaning and reforesting our oceans. It doesn't track your searches, and its servers run on eco-friendly hydroelectricity.
Not a search engine, but if you need to print a web page from your search results, this handy tool conserves paper and ink by allowing you to remove images, ads, and other unnecessary information.
You're probably becoming familiar with mainstream A.I. chatbots such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude, and you may be wondering about using them as search engines to find sources for your research assignments. This amazing technology is already proving useful in so many ways, but at this point in time, it's important to verify the information it generates.
While we wait for the research capabilities of these tools to improve, here are a couple of A.I.-powered alternatives. As with all A.I. tools, use with discretion and carefully evaluate results.
If you're ready to experiment with A.I. chatbots, try UC Berkeley's Chatbot Arena, which offers a selection of chatbots and allows you to compare results.
When you need to be more confident about the reliability of your search results (like when you need to find sources for a research paper or project), you might want to give Consensus a try. Unlike generative A.I. tools such as ChatGPT, Consensus is specifically designed for academic research. For a helpful video tutorial, see Streamlining Research with AI. The presenter begins speaking in detail about Consensus at the 10:50 mark.
For additional research tools like Consensus (such as ResearchRabbit and Elicit) and a wealth of information on artificial intelligence in higher education, visit Keeping Up with AI: Assorted Resources for College Educators.
This experimental search engine lets you skim the top million (or 100k, 10k, 1k, or 100) hits off of your Google search results to reveal the sites that never make it to the top.
Calling itself a "computational knowledge engine," this site specializes in retrieving quantitative data. (For search tips, see 10 Amazing Uses for Wolfram|Alpha and 23 Cool Non-Math Things You Can Do with Wolfram|Alpha.)
You can also try Goofram to search Google and Wolfram|Alpha simultaneously and get side-by-side results.
With this site, you can perform a Google search and get side-by-side results in two different languages.
This page was created and is maintained by
Jenny Saxton.
Questions and comments are welcome.