Poynter High - Reporting, Writing & Editing

Get beyond the Google search. In "Get Online and Find News Fast," a NewsU webinar, Poynter faculty member Al Tompkins shared web sites that will break your browsing habits and help you find things faster on the internet.

Here are a few search engines you might not be aware of and how to use them:

• Clusty.com – Clusters search results by topic. So if you search for "iPods" (say you're doing a story about MP3 players), you can sort your results by "MP3 players," "accessories," "reviews," "music," "iTunes," etc. You can also specifically search within blogs, which might give you a more personal look at your topic.
  

• Accoona.com – Accoona offers a "Super Target" search. You can limit results to a certain country or state, to sites that contain certain companies or people or are in a particular language, or by publisher.

• Twingine.com – Shows a Google search and Yahoo search side-by-side.
  

• Zoominfo.com – Search companies, people or jobs. Search "iPods" and it gives you 506 companies associated with the device with their web sites, if they have one. Also search for people. The site gives information found online about them — employment, church membership, school, etc.

These resources are particularly handy for journalists:

• Wayback Machine – Archives sites at dates in the past. So you can see what MTV's site looked like on a day in 2000 or 2005. Most of the links are still hot. You might use this in a trend story.
  

• Quikmaps.com – Create an interactive Google map that you can post on your website. The site gives you the HTML code. Draw lines or scribbles and add comment boxes, flags, arrows and an array of other graphics to your map. We've created a sample map of the Poynter Institute.

• Vote-smart.org – Find profiles of political candidates and representatives. This site shows voting records, speeches they've made and more. Would be useful if an officeholder is coming to town or in election season.

• Searchsystems.net – Search public records of all kinds. The site lists records offered by state, by country, or by category in every type imaginable. Find drivers licenses, professional licenses, birth and death records, sex offenders and more. This is the only site on this list that charges a fee ($7.99 a month), and it's one of the few sites Tompkins said he pays for.