10 Best Social Search Engines to Try in 2023

Social search engines refer to an enhanced version of the traditional search algorithm, enabling users to filter online social platforms and produce highly customized search results. Whether you are looking for a long-lost customer, spying on your competition, or trying to catch up with the latest trends on Instagram, a social media search engine lets you achieve the objective easily.

Of course, social media platforms come with inbuilt search tools. However, these search tools are limited, allowing you to search for a specific database. Customers are using different social media platforms. How are you supposed to find social mentions across multiple social platforms? A potential drawback of using a platform-specific search tool is that you will spend a lot of time and resources to find out what is happening on social.

Keeping track of what is happening on each platform, requires a search tool that allows visibility on all platforms. A platform agonistic social search engine, uses a collective filtering algorithm, elevating interesting and relevant content. Different social search engines are available for use by businesses.

In this post, we will feature some of the best social media search engines. Therefore, if you are looking for a social search engine, you have found the right page. Here is a top selection of the social search tools you can use.

1. Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics is a social media monitoring platform with a powerful social search engine. This social search tool lets you discover everything relating to your brand, competitors, and other relevant keywords. It scans all social media platforms and displays relevant results on a single dashboard.

Social search using Mentionlytics is a simple process. All you need to do is set up your Mentionlytics account, enter the keyword you want to search and relevant results will be displayed. Therefore, you can discover mentions, and relevant news and receive alerts on your email address showing you relevant search results.

Mentionlytics uses an advanced artificial intelligence-powered algorithm (SIA). This allows the users to monitor products, and customers, and look into what their competition is up to. Therefore, the user is able to see the big picture of what is being said about a brand. Here are some of the top features offered by Mentionlytics:

• Allows the user to search using different languages
• Advanced keyword search on all social media platforms
• Content filtering using boolean search operations for more complex queries
• Cross-Platform search
• Integrates into different social media and web applications including Trello and Slack
• Detecting trending topics and hashtags
• Social media analytics
• Discovery of who your top influencers are
• Allows users to discover and prevent social media crises across all major platforms
• User-friendly and an affordable social search tool

To start searching on social media, sign up for a free test:

Try Mentionlytics for FREE

2. Social Searcher

This is a free social search engine allowing users to search across all major social media platforms. The search engine effectively allows users to search social networks in real-time, providing an analytical report. It is resourceful for organizations and individuals who would want to monitor public social mentions.

Social Searcher, will measure and track mentions, presenting the results in an easy-to-use dashboard. The tool helps in streamlining social monitoring, hence allowing businesses to take advantage of opportunities. Therefore, with the tool you can discover customer feedback, letting you respond on a real-time basis. Apart from notifying you of the social mentions, Social Searcher presents actionable social analytics, helping in assessing the performance of the content that is shared via social media. Thus, you can get to know the behavioral triggers, allowing customization of content to target relevant audiences effectively.

Here are the features that come with Social Searcher

• Sentiment analysis
• Allows discovery of popular hashtags
• Gives insights into your audience
• Actionable social analytics
• Track the actions of your influencers
• Explore social media mentions

3. Mention

This social search engine allows companies to analyze the performance of social media campaigns. This social search tool enables real-time analysis of brand mentions and tags. The platform will analyze mentions across different social media platforms. Therefore, if you want to maintain an active presence across multiple platforms, the Mention tool will simplify your mission. This is through tracking and reporting what is said about brands, competitors, and products.

With Mention, the user can track everything easily, and get real-time reports. It is built with the Boolean search helping businesses to zero on specific brands, or competitors, hence producing precise market research. The social search engine is effective when it comes to engaging your audience across multiple platforms. Here is a quick overview of the features available:

• Allows users to keep real-time data hence tracking campaigns and performance
• Lets users search social media platforms for specific keywords
• Provides an aggregated single stream of information
• Provides custom email alerts
• Separate breakdown based on sentiments

4. Pipl

Pipl is one of the top social search engines providing information services from millions of sources including social media platforms. Organizations and individual users can use Pipl to search using different parameters, including brand names, phone numbers, user names, and email addresses. This Social Search Tool provides access to different information relating to demographics, contact information, and professionalism.

Using Pipl, organizations can come up with better-targeted content, enabling them to reach thousands of prospects. To enhance the user experience, Pipl collaborates with strategic technology vendors who offer complementary products and services. This enables the platform to provide clients with more value from the available information. The tool provides social search capabilities that are ideal for those interested in:

• Identifying verifications
• Helping in investigations
• Data enrichment
• eCommerce
• Financial solutions
• Marketing and sales
• Recruitment

5. Snitch.Name

Are you tired of having to look into various places in order to find information about your customers? If you are interested in searching for information that relates to your brand or products, Snitch.name is the social search engine you may require. Snitch.name provides important information helping to discover how organizations rank on social platforms. Therefore, it is referred to as the central gateway for social media search use.

Although Snitch.name is not developed to look fancy, it helps businesses to solve the social media monitoring problem. This is through enabling the building of social services that help in deciding on the profiles to target when marketing online. A search can be conducted by sampling by entering the search term in the search box found on the website’s home page. The tool presents results from different social media platforms.

With Snitch.name, you can enjoy the following features:

• Discover the important social media user data
• Access to reports from different social media platforms
• Simple and easy to use social search engine

6. Buzzsumo

This is a popular social search engine, designed to help marketers to find and research data. The platform features ease of monitoring mentions and discovering brand influencers. With hundreds of marketers using Buzzsumo to discover social media occurrences, it is enough proof that the platform is designed to provide success when it comes to targeted marketing.

Buzzsumo is a powerful tool, designed and built to provide competitor intelligence helping in performance benchmarking. The tool is also resourceful when it comes to building your content strategy. Therefore, if you are looking for the best approach for creating compelling content, use Buzzsumo to discover who your followers are and gain insights on behavioral triggers. It provides a powerful ability when it comes to crisis management, helping to protect a brand. Another Buzzsumo potential use case is in Digital PR, as the tool allows sharing with the people who matter. This is important as it accelerates the spread of positive reviews by letting organizations discover and re-share positive user-generated content.

To use Buzzsumo free of charge, simply enter the search keyword and click search.  If you prefer a paid plan, you can switch to Pro, Plus, Large or the Enterprise paid plans. Choose a paid plan that suits your requirements.

Buzzsumo provides the following features:

• Gives insights on most shared content
• Allows the user to carry out content analysis
• Access to trending news
• Find social media influencers
• Real-time monitoring

Try Mentionlytics for FREE

7. Spokeo

While it started as a social media aggregator, Spokeo quickly used its people lookup technology to mostly prevent fraud.

This social search engine goes beyond searching on social media; It looks up actual people. So, this people search engine aims to help people trust companies and each other again. Its platform is easy to use. 

In fact, all you have to do is type a name, e-mail, or phone and you’ll get valuable results. Users can find people from their past, research possible customers or employers, identify unknown callers, and protect themselves from criminals.

Spokeo searches over 12 billion public records and turns them into smart reports. The tool’s services are divided into four categories:

• Location & Contact Information (f.e. name, phone number, location history, etc.)
• Personal Details (f.e. family members, social accounts, lifestyle preferences, etc.)
• Public Records (f.e. Court and criminal records, birth certificates, etc.)
• Work and wealth reports (f.e. income, job history, etc.)

Some interesting Spokeo features include:

• Public social network and dating website profile monitoring
• Advanced people finder with customized search results
• Reverse phone lookup for scam detection
• Reverse email lookup for spam identification
• Enhanced public document tracking (including sex offenders’ records)
• Photo, video, and blog post locating tools

8. Keyhole

This social search engine allows users to take advantage of advanced analytics and media monitoring, enabling them to understand the full volume of any conversation. The tool provides users the ability to monitor the trending hashtags and tracking of keywords. The social media monitoring tool gives access to real-time and historical data, hence you can go back and review what you could have missed.

Keyhole is designed for use by agencies and enterprises, providing them with proper social media analytics, which is critical for business continuity. The product is ideal when it comes to tracking accounts and social media mentions. The tool features a convenient approach for users to gain insights into engagement levels helping to boost marketing strategies.

The keyhole features include:

• Social measurement
• Sentiment analysis
• Influencer identification
• Social reporting
• Social listening

9. BoardReader

Developed to address the shortcomings in social media monitoring, BoardReader is an accurate and effective way to discover social media mentions. The application helps in searching and locating, while it displays information from multiple web sources. The application works as an online feed aggregator, giving businesses access to informative data analysis. It gives the user the ability to streamline the search by specifying the information, to ensure only relevant detail appear on search results.

• A convenient social media search engine lets organizations pull in results from online forums.
• Platform-specific Social Search Engine

If you need to find something from a specific social network, you can easily do so using the inbuilt search tool. However, the limitation is that you will only find results from the specific platform.  Therefore, using the network-specific advanced search tool is recommended when you are not interested in finding out what is happening on the other platforms.

Examples of network-specific social search tools include:

• Facebook Search
• LinkedIn People / Job Search
• Twitter Search
• Instagram search
• Trello Search tool

The social platform-specific search tools are free to use. These tools also provide the user’s alerts on email or even the inbuilt notifications feature.

10. Determ

Formerly known as Mediatoolkit, Determ is another social search engine that enables you to explore social for the specific keyword that you have in mind. It’s a cloud-based monitoring platform that monitors mentions and keywords across many sources in multiple languages and of course, in real-time.

From sentiment and engagement metrics to influencer dashboards and competitive insights, Determ offers many customizable charts and reports to better understand your social efforts.

This user-friendly platform also offers a wide range of features for users to take advantage of, such as the ability to set custom alerts and digests, generate PDF reports and export Excel data. Plus, a mobile application has been designed for both iOS and Android devices.

What is Social Search?

Social search is a method used to retrieve specific information from various social media platforms. This process involves using keywords, phrases, hashtags, or usernames to find posts, people, businesses, or topics of interest. Social searches can be performed within individual social media platforms or through specialized search engines that scan multiple platforms at once. The purpose of these searches ranges from professional (e.g., market research, competitor analysis, or background checks) to personal (e.g., finding old friends or favorite brands).

Unlike traditional search engines like Google, which primarily index web pages, social search engines focus on content created and shared by users across various social media channels. They can find posts, tweets, photos, videos, profiles, and other user-generated content.

Social Search Benefits

Social Media Monitoring: It allows businesses and individuals to gather insights about consumer behaviors, trends, and preferences. This helps in developing effective marketing strategies.

Competitor Analysis: Social search engines are one of the best competitor analysis tools. Businesses can track their competitors’ activities, understand their strategies, and identify their strengths and weaknesses.

Finding Relevant Content: Individuals can find content relevant to their interests. It also helps content creators identify trending topics and create relevant content accordingly.

Reputation Management: Companies and individuals can monitor what is being said about them online, allowing for prompt response and management of their online reputation.
Networking and Relationship Building: It aids in finding and connecting with influencers, potential customers, or professionals in the same field.

Crisis Management: By tracking social media discussions, businesses can identify and respond to potential crises or negative comments in real-time.

Customer Service: Companies can track complaints, queries, and feedback, and provide immediate customer service.
Market Trends: It provides real-time updates on market trends, helping businesses to stay up-to-date and adapt to changes quickly.

Now Over to You

Social search engines provide businesses with an opportunity to monitor and analyze different parameters. Therefore, with these findings, marketers can be able to make strategic decisions. If you are using social search engines, you can focus on different user groups. Therefore, it is upon the user to find a social search tool that enables them to find information in real-time, while being able to view it in different formats.

Still, have doubts about what social search engine to choose? Try Mentionlytics free trial or start by entering the phrase you are looking for in the box below: