I’ve recently started using Addictomatic as my first or second port of call as far as search engines are concerned. What it does is pull together, on one page, results from blogs, Bing, Twitter, Yahoo!, Ask, various video sites and even Flickr. In short, it’s a good one-stop shop if you wish to include social networks in your trawl for information. To give you an idea of what it looks like, here’s a screenshot of a search I undertook on the term “self-publishing”.
As you can see, there’s a fair bit to follow up on, although at first glance not all of it seems relevant. In fact, some of the links are completely irrelevant or apparently advertisements, so I don’t think you can rely on Addictomatic alone for finding information. Nevertheless, it did mention the Strictly Writing blog, which I haven’t come across before, and which I didn’t see on the first page of either Google or Yippy but which I will certainly be reading from now on. See, for example, this highly-informed article called You Earn How Much? by Gillian McDade.
I’ve used Addictomatic for other search queries too, and it always gives me something different (what I’ve called the “quirkiness factor”) from the other search engines I use, so I definitely recommend it from that point of view. I also like the way it has everything laid out so neatly on the page, and the fact that the social search results sit alongside the more traditional sources.
Ratings out of 5
Look and feel: 5
Consistency of results: 3
Quirkiness Factor: 4
Overall: 4