Search engines

[FOWnut]

Draconis & I were talking about the 'big' search engines becoming very commercialised and returning more & more sponsored links and less & less useful ones. Rather than spending hours hunting for a better one I thougth I'd ask what you use for searches and why you prefer it (or them??). I mostly search for web pages & images (quite often on Google an image search yields much better results than a web page search). What are your thoughts?

[FOWnut]

I use Google simply because it's so fast to return results. Unfortunately the time saved is lost by visiting vast numbers of useless sites. I've used Yahoo and found it to be less useful. At another time I used Dogpile but wasn't happy there either.
I've (only) just stumbled on three more:
www.ixquick.com/ (This one seemed to present the most variety)
mamma.com/ (No image search here though)
www.monstercrawler.com/ (searches Google, Yahoo, Liver search, Ask)
As I said though, I've only just found these three and haven't had time to check them out properly.

[ash]

I use Google aswell and do not really care about the search resulting in sponsored ads as they are usually at the side of the page or limited to two at the top.

[blacktemplar]

www.altavista.com is ok

[FOWnut]

For something a little different try: clusty.com/
As well as the usual list of sites it also gives a list of categories down the left hand side of the page which allows you to filter the search results...nifty idea I reckon. It keeps the list of categories and shows which sub-cat you're viewing. It also allows you to preview a page without leaving the search results page...not sure if that's a big advantage though, especially with tabbed browsing...

If you want to compare Google and msn try this: www.aumha.org/compare.htm
It simultaneously displays and searches both engines on the one screen!
Search engines aside, have a look at the aumha.org site if you want any tips about any of the windows versions...