I just came across a search engine of sorts, one I hadn’t heard of before but really like for specific purposes now.

WolframAlpha calls itself a computational knowledge engine and what it appears to do is collect information on your search term rather than send you to a list of sites which may or may not tell you the whole story at one place.

For examples, see my searches on kangaroos, fiction and Melbourne.

I think it’s a great research tool – just to gather an overview of something of interest or a really good summary of key facts for serious research (such as for school work or background for writing an article or story).

It is of course still US-centric, but at least they clearly make those details as such (eg in definitions they give American pronunciation) and do include metric details (by default for searches about Australia).