How to Search the Web

Think you know how to search? Sure, you can throw a word or two at Google easy and see what it spits back. But, if you're looking for something specific, all too often it can be frustrating and damn-near-impossible to get the information you're looking for.
When I go looking for something, Google is generally my first resource. I'll try using a couple of words together and see what comes back right away. Google can also offer search suggestions as you type from their beta Google completion service. If the basic search fails to come back with good resources, I might use some Google tricks to restrict and customize my results.
When I find a useful page, I use Alexa's web search to find related web sites with ratings and reviews. Generally, those results are more useful than Google's "related:" search. Next, I might go to http://del.icio.us/url?url=[:the web site you are looking up:], which will show me other users that have bookmarked the page. I can use their tags to poke around del.icio.us and see what other, similar pages they have bookmarked.
If I'm looking for specific types of things, I may take another tack altogether.
- for images, I'd look at flickr.
- to buy things, I'd use Froogle or Amazon.
- for movies, I use the Internet Movie Database.
- for research, I'd try the new Google Scholar.
- for news, I'd search Google News or Blogdigger.
- for source code, Koders
- for music, Musicplasma to find artists that are similar to ones I like (and it has a neat interface!)
- for video clips, I'd use BlogTelevision to search the blogosphere for *all* sorts of clips, heh

Am I missing any? Drop me a message.