Ref Seek is a new search engine designed for academic use. Ref Seek seems to eliminate the advertising and paid links found on Google, Ask, Yahoo, and other commercial search engines. Ref Seek’s intention is to serve only search results that are academic in nature. I did a couple of quick searches using the terms “glacier” and “healthy body fat.” What I found is that there wasn’t any advertising, but the results were not entirely academic. In the case of searching with the term “glacier,” Wikipedia was the first result. Wikipedia is also the first result when searching “glacier” on Google.

The difference between Ref Seek and a generic Google search lies lower than the top results in search returns. As you compare search results between Ref Seek and Google you will find that the second and third pages of search results on Ref Seek contain results that seem to be more “academic” than what is found on the second and third pages of a generic Google search.