Mary Ellen Bates has compiled a great list of suggestions for quickly finding the answers to strange research questions. In Searching for Quick Answers To Odd Questions, she instructs users to consult the topic-specific databases (a.k.a. the invisible Web) rather than using general search engines.
This is the same advice that I offer in my article, Searching Smarter: Finding Legal Resources on the Invisible Web. For example, if you are looking for the divorce rate by state, go right to the Statistical Abstract of the US from the Census Bureau. Makes sense, right?
Source: SearchEngineWatch