As good as Google is, have you ever wanted to try the same search on a different search engine after a your Google search disappointed you ? Did you give up on that idea because you didn’t want the hassle of typing in a new URL to go to a different search engine, type in the same keywords and do the same search again? I know I have :+P

Google has made us extremely dependant on it and very very lazy when it comes to search, mostly because the result Google returns on good most of the times!

For Firefox users, there is an extremely simple and power plugin to solve that problem and allow you to easily unleash the power of other search engines when Google did not answer your prayer.

The CustomiseGoogle Plugin is a Firefox plugin that gives you tonnes of feature to customise your Google search experience, some of the really handy features include:

• Remove Google Ads
• Rewrite links to point straight to the images in Google Images
• Add position counter and many others !!!

But the real killer features for searchers is the way it adds links to the top of Google search results that allows you search the same keyword on other search engines with a simple click of a button! Here are the links just to show you how easily accessible they are!

I must confess I would not have tried a lot of my Google searches on other search engines if it were not for the simplicity of this approach and I have benefited greatly for it!

You will also benefit by having these short cuts to other search engines and be a more productive and efficient searcher

The plugin creates different links depending whether you did a Google web search, blog search or image search and point you to the other leading search engines depending on what you are searching for.

You might ask, which alternative search engines should I try then ? I have blogged the merits of various alternative search engines in Search1.x, including how Technorati is a much superior blog search engine for blogs search, and why you should try live search. Better still, you should check out the Search 1.x Search Engine Directory for a comprehensive list of great specialist search engines broken down by their specialisation.

At the end of the day, it is your own experience that counts, but at least the only thing stands between you and potentially better search results is just a click of a button now!Similar Posts:

• How to Customise Your Browser For More Search Power
• Four Easy Tips To Increase Your Search Productivity Today
• Why Should You Bother With Alternative Search Engines
• The New Visual Search Experience
• 3 Reasons Why Search Toolbar Makes You A Better Searcher

Extending from my previous post on why you should try Yahoo Search, I want to share with you some of the latest innovation from Live Search.  Thanks to Amit from the Digital Inspiration who pointed me to these tips!  The latest round of innovation from Live Search include various things including previewing of videos and clipping and saving of image search results but for me, the below innovation around the core search functionality really differentiate Live Search from Google and I think a lot of users will find useful.

1. Find pages that contain links to documents, MP3 files, videos and zips

Using the Google “filetype” operator, you always could find specific non-html documents with the keywords you are interested in. For example here is a search for “iPhone filetype:pdf” and Google returns links to the actual PDF documents related to iPhone that it found

But what if I am interested in a web pages that CONTAIN LINKS to various types of documents, kind of a content aggregation page where links to useful resources in specific file format are compiled. Specifically what if I want to find web pages about iPhone on the AT&T website that contains PDF documents ? Whilst you can’t really do this easily using Google search, you can do this quite easily with Live Search using the query “site:att.com iphone contains:pdf” which finds me this page with lots of PDF files about the iPhone !

You can use the “contains” operator to find documents, mp3 files, videos and zips. I am sure it will come in handy for me sometime in the future :+)

2. Limit you searches to sites that contain RSS

Looking for sites that contain RSS feeds so that you can keep up with whatever you were searching for ? The “hasfeeds:” operator allow you to find websites that matches your keyword search and also has an RSS feed on the page. Here my attempt to find sites about “iPhone Jailbreak” and I can subscribe to.

3. Get Live Search Results via RSS feeds

For those of us who now depend on RSS feeds to help us consume the vast amount of information, having your search results as RSS feeds has a number of advantages. Whilst you can always get search results via email using the Google Alert services but strangely Google still hasn’t gotten around to adding the search results RSS subscription functionality. You can however use a third party service feedmysearch to achieve the same thing.

With Live Search, there is an undocumented way to turn search results into feeds directly from Live Search.

Once you have completed your search (”iphone jailbreak” for example)

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=iphone+jailbreak&go=&form=QBRE

You just need to append “&format=rss” to the end of the url. so the above query can be turned into an rss feed by using this url

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=iphone+jailbreak&go=&form=QBRE&format=rss

You can then subscribe to it using your favourite RSS readers. Undocumented, yes, but works like a charm !

Whilst these new features might not warrant a complete switch to Live Search from Google, they give you more options when it comes to general web search and can add to your toolbox of Search kit and make you more productive.Similar Posts:

• Best Video Search Engine for iPhone
• Simplest Way to Refine Your Search And Improve Search Result
• Bing Search Improves on the Search Results Page
• Google exploring new search UI
• Why Should You Bother With Alternative Search Engines