rcjordan - 9:45 pm on Aug 4, 2000 (gmt 0)

>search modifiers that let you do incredibly precise searches.

Absolutely, and you'd be surprised how few know that you can use +, -, or "" .

When AV fell apart last year, I did switch to ixquick [ixquick.com] for a while, though as a meta it is dependent on others for the algo. It still gave me the best returns using the search modifiers, but not quite as good as AV/Raging. I still switch off to ixquick if I'm coming up short on AV, but it usually just doesn't happen. Get your modifiers right, and you rarely have to go elsewhere or deeper than the first 100 listings.