Google search works great for general queries, but there are dozens of specialized alternatives that do things Google can’t—or won’t. These five tools search through archived websites, scan code repositories, find exposed devices, and aggregate results without tracking you.
Shodan is often described as “Google for computers.” Instead of crawling websites, it maps the devices connected to the internet, from smart TVs to industrial systems, and indexes the details.
For instance, type webcam in the search bar, and it’ll show exposed cameras on the web. Now search for default password and you’ll see routers and databases still using factory logins like admin/admin. Shodan doesn’t let you log in, but it makes clear how many devices remain unsecured simply because no one changed the defaults.
I’m not suggesting you access these devices (that’s illegal), but knowing they exist changes how you think about internet security. You can use Shodan to audit your networks, finding forgotten servers or misconfigured databases before attackers do. You can search by country, port number, operating system, or specific product versions.
I use it to check if any of my smart home devices are broadcasting more than they should. Understanding what’s visible about your own devices helps you patch security holes before someone else finds them. The free tier gives you 50 results per search, which is plenty for exploration, while premium plans start at $69 a month.
You might know that Wayback Machine lets you view old versions of any website. But what you probably don’t know is its advanced search lets you filter by file type, URL patterns, or specific content across millions of archived pages—including files companies removed years ago, thinking they were gone forever.
I’ve used it to retrieve deleted Reddit posts and web pages and to track changes on specific URLs. When job hunting, you can check if previous postings on the same URL included salary ranges that companies removed from newer listings, which can be incredibly useful during negotiations.
It’s a fun little tool if you want to go back to when the web was still taking its roots; however, it also serves serious purposes. Journalists use it to capture snapshots of web pages they suspect might later be edited or deleted, and legal teams rely on archived pages to produce evidence of claims companies later tried to deny.
If you want to know how a popular website is built and what technologies it uses, you can fire up the developer tools and inspect the source code manually. Or you can use PublicWWW to search across 477 million web pages at once. It indexes pages such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS that you can use to find sites using the same payment gateway, analytics tool, or framework version.
PublicWWW works great for research as well. You can use it to find the websites owned by the same company using the Google Analytics ID. However, it’s mainly used by teams to track competitors’ technology stacks, like payment tools or chat widgets.
The limitation is that it only indexes home pages, but that’s usually enough. Most sites leak information in their source code, including tracking IDs, comment blocks, and framework versions. So, everything you need to know about a site’s technology is usually right there on the front page.
Grep.app (now owned by Vercel) is a free code search tool that lets you search through any public GitHub repository instantly. Unlike GitHub’s built-in search, it supports regular expressions, so you can look for complex patterns across different programming languages instead of just plain text. You can even jump straight into a specific project with a shortcut like grep.app/owner/repo.
It’s a handy way to find real code examples. When you encounter an issue, paste in the error message and see how other developers solved it, or search for validation patterns and function signatures when you need quick inspiration. Grep.app is incredibly fast, easy to use, and a great resource when you want answers directly from actual code.
SearXNG is an open-source, privacy-focused search engine aggregator that shows results from over 230 sources while stripping out every tracker, cookie, and fingerprint attempt.
The privacy is obvious, but the real pull is aggregation. Different search engines excel at other things. SearXNG combines them all, removing duplicates and ranking by relevance across sources. It supports all advanced operators you know from Google, like site: and filetype:, as well as some you don’t, such as !images, !news, !papers. It can also find academic papers, news from specific dates, and images without watermarks from specialized databases that Google won’t crawl.
For most people, the easiest way to try SearXNG is through a public instance like searx.be, but you can also self-host if you want to. While it can be slightly slower than direct searches due to querying multiple sources, you’re trading speed for quality search results and greater privacy.
These tools live in the gap between Google and the dark web—legal, public, and built on their own specialized indexes. Use them responsibly, and you’ll realize just how much of the internet lies beyond a simple search box.
