Heh looks like despite its quest for world domination, Google is, apparently, is not always the best choice for a search.
Do you know
Findory News? It creates your "personalized" newspaper by watching which news links you click on and then emphasizing those types of stories each time you visit their site.
Or
Topix? This site monitors breaking news from more than 6,000 sources and lets you filter results by ZIP code. Also in general a great news article search engine.
Some other general search engines to look for:
ZapMeta,
Mooter,
Gigablast,
Vivisimo (a cluster search builder).
Do you know any other interesting search engines?