I have a love-hate relationship with search engines.  There are days when I enter the right incantation and find what I’m looking for right off the bat.

And there are days that it seems that I can never find what I’m looking for, regardless of the search terms.

When the Internet was young, there were many sites that had listings of where you can find things.  These were valued by search engines early on because they helped them find things.

Now, directory listings aren’t as useful because they’re trying to game the system.  However, there are still some good lists, especially if you’re looking for something very specific… like, say an Arizona Mortgage Broker.  In that case, you’re better off finding a directory listing site with some kind of ranking system, because out on the search engine you’re going to see listing for brokers as well as 5 books from Amazon, 3 eBay auctions and 10 blog posts on the mortgage meltdown.

What tools do you use to find what you’re looking for online?