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100 Useful Niche Search Engines You’ve Never Heard Of

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Lina Maini

Well, it’s probable that you have heard of a few of the niche search engines mentioned by our friends from Social Blog 100+ Useful Search Engines.  Aside from using megasearch engine Google, though, have you really surfed the more drilled down search sites?  I’m sure you can find use from at least a few in the list.  Below, we’ve selected one or several from each category that we find particularly useful.

Extracurricular

Search blogs, games and even forum postings for information and fun.

Bloglines:  Find “billions of articles” and posts going back to 2003 from blogs, comics and more.

FindSounds:  This search site finds sound effects in all kinds of file formats, channels and resolutions.  Very useful for making presentations  impactful.

 

Quick Answer Guides

Have a specific question you need answered quickly? Go here.

Answers.com: Type in your question to this search box or answer other users’ questions about politics, automotive issues, TV shows and pop culture, health, technology and more.

AskMeNow: Use this site to do a quick Wikipedia search from your mobile phone.

eHow:  This is the gold standard know-it-all site with literally an answer for any question you can think of.

Lexxe: Type in your question to this search engine, which pulls answers from its database of URLs added by users.

 

City Guides and Travel

Get to know your  town a little better, or plan a vacation or study abroad trip with these search engines.

Google Local: Many don’t realize that this popular site is also a search engine. Find local businesses and addresses here.

MSN City Guides: Click on a city to get started or type in a general location or activity to let this search engine find fun things for you to do in your area.

CitySquares: the premiere hyper-local search site in New England, New York City and eastern New York State.

Kayak.com: This aggregate travel search engine finds the lowest air fares, cruise vacations, car rentals and hotel stays available through the Web that match your travel requests.

Trabber: Trabber.com searches 31 different websites to bring up cheap flights based on the schedule you submit.

 

Shopping Search Engines

Find customer reviews, product information and shopping sites with these search engines.

MySimon: This fun site lists shopping specials and gift ideas for holidays, and it lets you search within a specific category or conduct a general search.

Shopzilla: Shopzilla is super easy to use. Enter in the keywords or product description for the item you’re shopping for, or browse the categories on the right, to bring up results from online retailers like Amazon.com.

PriceGrabber: Conduct an advanced search by shopping different categories or type in exactly what you’re looking for on PriceGrabber.com.

Bing: This comprehensive site lets you first browse by category to narrow your search or type in keywords to bring up something more specific.

 

Business

Those interested in staying current on business news and trends can take advantage of these niche search engines.

Bloomberg: Bloomberg.com connects you to business news through its search engine, breaking news articles and market data updates.

IFACnet: Accountants can use this search engine for industry news and “access to global resources and information.”

Business.com: Entrepreneurs can browse categories like software, startup, transportation, office management, real estate and health care to “quickly find anything for [their] business”.

 

Academic and Reference

Find reliable and authoritative reference sites here.

Librarian’s Internet Index: This site brings together “websites you can trust,” on subjects like media, law, communications, consumer research, health and more.

Scirus: This scientific search engine claims to be “the most comprehensive scientific research tool on the web” and indexes over 450 million science-related resources.

Google Scholar: Search journal articles, abstracts, academic papers and bibliographies, and other scholarly publications here.

Intute: Social Sciences: This division of the online search tool Intute connects you to quality information about government policy, geography, law, economics, anthropology, business management, social welfare, psychology, politics, women’s studies and more.

CiteSteer: Great “scientific literature digital library.” For computer science and IT needs.

 

Social Media and People

User-generated content and user-driven sites like these often result in more relevant search results for you.

wink: wink is “where people find people.” Search by location, name, interests, school or any other category to help you reach old friends and family members.

 

Multisearch

These search engines offer more than just ordinary searches. Enjoy using features like shared searches, saved memory and specific search options.

Trexy: Trexy can help you “blaze search trails” by saving your search memory, share your searches with the Trexy community, and add a TrailBar button to your toolbar for fast searches.

 

TV, Video and Radio

Look up video clips for presentations or discover new radio sites and web streams through these search tools.

veoh: Find millions of online videos by searching this site.

blinx: blinx digs into the Web to find “over 26 million hours of video” and bring up relevant results.

Radio-Locator: Search for over 10,000 different radio stations and 2,500 web streams from radio stations all over the world.

Snipp.TV: Find video and audio content from this easy-to-use beta search engine.

 

Medical and Health Search

Research authoritative journals and publications.

PubMed: This search tool is sponsored by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.

OmniMedicalSearch.com: This site has been named a Top 5 Medical Search Engine by About.com and is lauded by The Washington Post. Search the Web, images or forums to get connected to quality health and medical information.

American Hospital Directory: Find a nearby hospital fast by typing in your telephone area code, zip code, city or state.

MedicineNet: This organized search engine displays your results according to different categories, like News, Symptoms, Procedures and Tests, and Medications, so you can quickly find the most relevant results.

 

Law

Gain access to court rulings, history and political sciences resources, and other law material here.

eLaw: Find cases, attorneys, motions… on this super search site.

FindLaw: Find attorneys and answers to your law questions by searching here.

Meta-Index for U.S. Legal Research: Search judicial opinions, federal regulation, legislation and more on this site.

 

Metasearch and Megasearch Engines

The following search engines work extra hard to bring you information from other search engines at the same time, including Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and others.

Dogpile: Find information from “all the best search engines” here.

Excite: This metasearch engine also shows you the latest sports scores, stock ticker, featured games and videos, and more.

HotBot: This search engine can pull information and material from Yahoo!, IyGO.com, and MSN.

 

Photos, Images and Visual Search Engines

Make your search a more visual experience by checking out these tools.

Grokker: Grokker searches Wikipedia, Yahoo! and Amazon Books, and then displays your results in an outline view or a map view.

Picsearch: Use Picsearch when you need to add images to a project or presentation.

 

News Searches

Stay current on business, technology, cultural and political news.

News Lookup: Find news stories from all over the world, or just search a particular country or news topic.

AlltheWeb: Use the News search tool on this site to find relevant stories from newspapers, TV stations and other news sites. 90.Yahoo! News: Search sports, entertainment, business, technology, world and U.S. news here.

 

Jobs and Real Estate

Turn to these search engines to help you with your search for an apartment, domestically or internationally.  You may even find  time shares,  home swaps and interns for your business.

Hotpads.com: Find homes and apartment listings for sale or for rent around the country with this tool.

trulia: This smart search engine finds homes for sale by zip code or city and state. You can also find movers, moving tips and more on this comparative shopping site.

Internship Programs: Look or post for interns after you log on.

There’s a wealth of information out there in the etherworld.  The megasearch engines, like Google or Yahoo are fine but they operate strictly on algorithms and ad revenue so the response you will receive to a search query may not be the best answer for your situation.  Poke around a bit.

BNI Operatives: Street smart: Web savvy.

TIP OF THE WEEK FOR OUR SUBSCRIBED READERS:  PUT YOUR VERY OWN FIRM’S TOOLBAR ONTO YOUR CLIENTS’ BROWSERS. FREE. 

As always, stay safe.

Filed under: General Information, Search Engines | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Best To Worst Legal Video Ads: Your NetFace, Part II/II

Posted on July 20, 2009 by Lina Maini

Video commercials today are inexpensive and have the potential to reach a very wide audience, especially via the internet. 

As promised last week, we reviewed hundreds of attorney commercials and have below brought you, the best, the fair to muddled and the “Take 72…” lawyer video ads.:

PITCH PERFECT!

Hands down still the best trial law advertising piece out there.

Assessment:

1. To the point with contact info consistently displayed.

2. Uncomplicated speech.

3. Effective message relay.

 

NOT BAD FOR YOUR FIRST SHOT

Assessment:

1. Repetitive in certain parts.

2. Unclear message (client range is too broad - from indie tenant disputes to large commercial contract matters).

3. The logo and contact information is easily available at all times.

 

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME:

Assesment:

1. Attorney’s contact info hard to find.  Should be in constant view along the bottom or embedded in the video.

2. The animation tells a story opposite of the attorney’s intended message.  The dog and kids for the most part are all playful, cute…

3. That message, that dog attacks can cause very debilitating and horrific damage to a victim, is not presented.

4.  Leash laws and prior notice should have been at the very least mentioned.

An effective video  legal ad should be a) deliver a clear message, plainly worded; clearly representing the firm’s specialty areas, b) 30 – 45 seconds long at max, c) have contact info present throughout the entire video.

TIP OF THE WEEK FOR OUR SUBSCRIBED READERS:  ONE TINY GADGET WILL TURN A 30 FOOT  SPACE AROUND  YOU INTO A PERSONAL CONNECTION ZONE – FOR UP TO 5 DEVICES – WITHOUT ANY WIRES, PLUGS, USB CONNECTS… IT CAN EVEN TURN YOUR IPOD TOUCH OR OTHER SUCH DEVICE  INTO AN IPHONE IF YOU LOSE OR MISPLACE YOUR MOBILE WHILE TRAVELING.

As always, stay safe.

Filed under: General Information, legal marketing, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

“Best Lawyer”; Ethics Violation. Your “Netface”, Part 1/2

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Lina Maini

This week’s Bulletin is short and to the point.  Monitor your firm’s Netface (your site, your social networks and other postings).  (This week’s post applies to anybusiness, not just legal firms, as well as to most individuals online.)

Wishing to achieve or remain on the tech/new media edge, it seems that everyone has a personal or business website and a LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter account.   What we call your online presence, or Netface.  Make no mistake, your firm must be on the web map.  Not having a professional and updated Netface can make your practice appear antiquated, irrelevant or under-enthused. 

It’s also in your firm’s best interest to keep an eye on your postings.

Social Networking Tips:

LinkedIn- Of course it’s nice to receive a glowing recommendation from a client.  Edit before you post.  “Best lawyer”, “Most knowledgeable lawyer in product liabilities” and “Use ________, Esq. Guaranteed results”, will come back to haunt you.

FaceBook – Do NOT “friend” or “poke” potential witnesses.  It doesn’t look good at all.

Twitter – Filter your followers.  A rival, investigator or dissatisfied former client can a) determine your marketing and sales strategies and relative income/client base, b) follow your whereabouts and gather other  personal info that you would rather strangers not know and and c) potentially slam your account into a spamming nightmare. 

No need to be paranoid; just vigilant.

Next week, in the second part of our “Netface” series, we’ll review law firm marketing videos:  the good, the bad and those barely making the bar.

TIP OF THE WEEK FOR SUBSCRIBED USERS:  THOUSANDS OF LAW FIRMS ONLINE.  HOW DOES YOURS GET TO BE ON GOOGLE’S PAGE ONE?  (available only in your email Bulletin version)

BNI Operatives: Street smart: Web savvy.

As always, stay safe.

Filed under: internet, legal marketing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Have A Fantastic Fourth!!

Posted on July 3, 2009 by Lina Maini
from all of us here at Beacon Network Investigations. Inc.

from all of us here at Beacon Network Investigations. Inc.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Planning On A Flat Growth Year? Outside The Box Legal Marketing

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Lina Maini

From sole practitioner to a large, multi-city law firm, just about every lawyer is always looking for ways to bring in new business or continue with good clients. 

First, a primer from those legal marketing gurus at The Rainmaker Institute:

Now. let’s identify and resolve several common challenges to achieving your firm’s elevated financial objectives:

Challenge 1:  Legal advertising rules are so onerous (especially in NYS) as to make almost all legal marketing ads appear the same. 

Resolution: Study your competitors’ advertising and do something different.

DON’T use tired phrases such as “25 years of combined experience”, “our competitive team of attorneys” and “we’re here to help you”.   

DO use unique phrasing, e.g., “Injured? Before you talk to an insurance adjuster or hire a lawyer, email or call us for our free pamphlet/book/DVD on what to do if you are injured.  An informed client does better for himself.”

 

CHALLENGE 2 :  Differentiating yourself from the rest of the legal crowd.

Resolution:  Write a book (even one of 10 pages). 

DON’T make it full of terms that laypeople don’t really understand, such as “former prosecutor” or “I’m a member of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association”. 

DO initially use self-publishing companies.  (LuLu and Cafepress come to mind.)  They will accommodate you with everything from POD (print on demand), PQN (print quantity needed) to issuing copyright-protecting ISBNs ( International Standard Book Number).  Include your contact info on the inside back cover.  (Don’t presume people will Google you.)

 

CHALLENGE 3: Taking on C and D quality clients to pay the rent.

Resolution: Curb the number of these cases you take on.  It’ll expend time better spent on bigger cases.

DON’T take on more than you can handle. There is a marketing ROI standard that has withstood the test of time: 80% of your business will come from 20% of your clients. (This includes repeats, referrals, networking… )  Also, don’t immediately offer a free consultation in these cases.  Do you really have the time?

DO make potential C and D clients work for your representation.  If they are serious enough, they’ll take the time to educate themselves by going through your materials (have a packet handy) and make it absolutely clear that you are a legal advocate, not the Library of Congress or the help desk to be called 10 times a week.

 

CHALLENGE 4:  Making yourself appear to be King/Queen of the Hill in your niche field.

Resolution:  Let the words speak for you.

DON’T declare yourself an expert. (Let your writing, appearances, bragging rights… do it for you.)

DO publish a monthly newsletter.  List your highest award settlements (obviously observing the client privacy regs).  Keep yourself  in the public eye.  Create mini videos (about 3 mins. is the average online attention span) addressing your area of law without appearing as an “As Sold On TV” commercial.  Put several vids up on your site.  Offer to speak, gratis,  as an expert (don’t use the word) on radio, tv, online shows.

With the long holiday weekend coming up, there’ll be plenty fo time to review this marketing advice.  It works.   I published this post, I’m prepared to back it up.  Just email editor@beaconbulletin.com  and we’ll send you a free marketing checklist.

BNI Operatives: Street smart: Web savvy.

Have a safe, healthy and relaxing Fourth!

4th of july

Filed under: legal marketing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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