(CNN) -- We may be coming upon a new era for the Internet search. Google dominates the search world, but some sites are trying to expand the possibilities. And, despite what you may think, Google is not the only player. New search engines that are popping up across the Web strive to make searches faster, smarter, more personal and more visually interesting. Some sites, like Twine and hakia, will try to personalize searches, separating out results you would find interesting, based on your Web use. Others, like Searchme, offer iTunes-like interfaces that let users shuffle through photos and images instead of the standard list of hyperlinks. Kosmix bundles information by type -- from Twitter, from Facebook, from blogs, from the government -- to make it easier to consume.
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New search engines try to make searches faster, smarter, more personal
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Wolfram Alpha, which launches this month, acts as a powerful calculator
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Others are trying to make searches more visual instead of text-based
Wolfram Alpha
The much-talked about @placeholder, or Alpha for short, harnesses massive computing power to answer users' questions, even if they're never been answered on the Web before.
Web
The much-talked about Wolfram Alpha, or Alpha for short, harnesses massive computing power to answer users' questions, even if they're never been answered on the @placeholder before.
Google
Google
If you ask @placeholder a question, the search engine's computers scan the Web for matching search terms and come up with answers that make the most sense statistically.
Wolfram Alpha
@placeholder, by contrast, pulls information from existing data sets that have been approved by the site's math-minded staff.
Google
Google
It's unclear which companies, if any, will be able to accomplish this, but @placeholder appears to be working on that problem as well as others.