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UK Search Engines

By Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Watch, Oct 22, 2002

Many of the search engines listed below are UK-versions of those listed on the Major Search Engines page. They generally operate the same way as their global counterparts, unless noted.

AltaVista UK
http://uk.altavista.com/

United Kingdom edition of AltaVista that offers the ability to search find UK-relevant documents or across the entire world.

AOL Search UK
http://search.aol.co.uk/

Same as AOL Search in the US, except that you can limited searches to pages within the United Kingdom. Paid listings come from Overture UK, rather than Google.

Ask Jeeves UK
http://www.ask.co.uk/

Provides answers compiled by UK-based editors in the "Questions I can answer for you" section, while "Websites I can show you" results are paid listings from Espotting UK, followed by crawler-based listings from Ask Jeeves-owned Teoma.

Ask Jeeves Concierge
http://www.jeevesconcierge.co.uk/

Stuck at the airport and need a limo to pick you up? Need a plumber who can stop that leak? Need advice on what gift to send you wife for her birthday? Ask Jeeves UK has launched a new "concierge" service for those in the UK offering access to telephone advice and help for problems like these and others. Cost is #300 ($480) per year. (Dec. 2002)

BBCi Search
http://www.bbc.co.uk/

Provides listings from Google, topped by select picks from BBC editors.

Excite UK
http://www.excite.co.uk

Crawler-based results here come from FAST and a special "Directory" tab on the results page gives access to Open Directory human-compiled listings. Owned by Tiscali, which purchased the Excite site in 2002.

Espotting.com
http://www.espotting.com/

Paid placement search engine targeting users in the United Kingdom. See the Paid Listings Search Engines page for more about Espotting.

Google UK
http://www.google.co.uk/

Offers the ability to restrict searches to just pages deemed relevant to the UK.

LookSmart UK
http://www.looksmart.co.uk/

UK-edition of LookSmart, which provides some listings to MSN Search, below.

Lycos UK
http://www.lycos.co.uk/

You can search for pages deemed to be UK and Ireland relevant or across the entire web, as well as access a UK-specific human-compiled directory of web sites.

Mirago
http://www.mirago.co.uk/

Crawler-based UK search engine which also offers a filtered version for kids.

MSN Search
http://search.msn.co.uk/

Like MSN Search in the UK, except that the primary listings here come from LookSmart's UK directory.

Somewherenear.com
http://somewherenear.com/

Tell Somewherenear what type of business you want, such as a pub or cinema, then tell it your location, and the search engine will return matching businesses. If you have a WAP phone, there's a special version that's perfect for locating businesses while on the move.

UK Plus
http://www.ukplus.co.uk/

Owned by Associated Electronic Publishing, the new media arm of the UK's Associated Newspapers (Daily Mail, Evening Standard). It launched in Jan. 1997 as an internally built directory but shifted over to being powered by LookSmart UK in July 2002.

Overture UK
http://uk.overture.com/

UK-edition of the Overture paid placement search engine. See the Paid Listings Search Engines page for more about Overture.

Yahoo UK & Ireland
http://uk.yahoo.com/

You can search all of Yahoo's human-compiled listings or choose to restrict your query to match only UK web sites. Even when searching all of Yahoo, UK web sites are given a boost in the rankings.

Zeal UK
http://uk.zeal.com

UK-edition of the LookSmart-owned volunteer directory of non-commercial web content.