| Meta
Search Engines
What Are "Meta-Search"
Engines? How Do They Work?
In a meta-search engine, you submit keywords in its search box,
and it transmits your search simultaneously to several individual
search engines and their databases of web pages. Within a few
seconds, you get back results from all the search engines queried.
Meta-search engines do not own a database of Web pages; they
send your search terms to the databases maintained by search
engine companies.
The idea of meta-searching
is much better than the reality in most cases. You would think
you would save a lot of time by searching only in one place
and sparing the need to use and learn several separate search
engines.
What Meta-Search Engines
Are Included in This Page?
There are three families of meta-search engines at this time:
Tools for serious digging
in many resources, with powerful abilities to help you find
what you seek within search results. These are appropriate for
very serious researchers to use for in depth probing of a topic.
Good meta-search engines that accept complex searches, integrate
results well, eliminate duplicates, and offer additional features
such as intelligent ranking or clustering by subjects within
your search results.
Meta-search engines that search a number of places and return
results without the features above. There are many meta-search
engines in this family, so many that I cannot describe them
here and keep up with the ways they rapidly change.
This page only lists the first two categories and no longer
lists any of the third. I receive requests frequently from inventors
and designers of meta-search engines. The emergence of the previous
two types, which are far more superior as search tools. I welcome
suggestions of new meta-searchers that are comparable to the
first two categories above.
Meta-Search Engines for
SERIOUS Deep Digging
Meta-Search Tool What's Searched
(As of date at bottom of page. They change often.) Complex Search
Ability Results Display
SurfWax
www.surfwax.com
Click My Search Sets, and select from a good list of search
engines, including: AllTheWeb, AltaVista, AOL, Excite, Google,
Hotbot, MSN, NBCi, OpenDirectory, Yahoo!
Can mix with educational, US Govt tools, and news sources, or
many other categories.
At the Free level, 3 search sets or 10 resources from a pool
of 500 resources. More at the Silver ($24/yr) or Gold ($24/yr).
Accepts " ", +/-. Default is AND between words. I
recommend fairly simple searches, allowing SurfWax's SiteSnaps
and other features to help you dig deeply into results.
Can customize in My Preferences after you join at the free or
higher level.
Can save searches in an InfoCubby. Results can be sorted by
relevancy, A-Z by site title, or source.
Click on source link to view complete search results there.
Click on to view helpful "SiteSnap™" extracted from
most sites in frame on right.
FocusWords from a page represent its context.
Shows your words in context in the page. Click on for "ContextZooming™"
- more context of your search terms as found in page.
Gives statistics on images and links in most pages.
Copernic Basic 2001
www.copernic.com
Select Google and others from great list of search engines by
clicking the Properties button following Advanced Search search
box. Some good choices are: AltaVista, AOL, EuroSeek, Fast/AllTheWeb,
Google, Hotbot, Lycos, MSN, Netscape Netcenter, Open Directory
Project, Teoma, Wisenut, Yahoo!
ALL, ANY, Phrase, and more. Also Boolean searching within results
under Refine (powerful!). Extensive help under Help menu.
Integrated with Internet Explorer (not Netscape). Must be downloaded
and installed, but Basic version is free of charge.
Many advanced features, can change results display, tracks previous
searches.
Other Better Than Average
General Meta-Searchers
Meta-Search Tool What's Searched
(As of date at bottom of page. They change often.) Complex Search
Ability Results Display
Ixquick
www.ixquick.com
AOL, All the Web, Ask Jeeves/Direct Hit, EntireWeb, FindWhat,
Go, Hotbot, Kanoodle, LookSmart, MSN, Netscape, Open Directory,
Overture Translates moderately complicated searches into each
search engine's syntax. Supports basic forms of Booleans and
phrases, but not wildcards, parentheses, or other modifiers
such as NEAR. Eliminates search engines that do not handle complex
searches. Brings "top 10" from each search engine,
and aggregates results. Also uses and reports ranking in each
site. Eliminates duplicates.
Vivisimo
www.vivisimo.com
AllTheWeb/Fast, Yahoo!,
MSN, AOL, Netscape, and a few other possibilities for general
web. More for news.
Can customize in Advanced Search form. Accepts and "translates"
complex searches with Boolean operators and field limiting.
More info. Results accompanied with subject subdivisions based
on words in search results, giving usually the major themes
(Vivisimo Clustering Engine™). Click on these to search within
results on each theme.
What's WRONG with the Third Category of Meta-Search Engines?
If you are looking for something distinctive or unique, like
the name of an organization, person, or thing or a phrase in
quotes, you can probably find what you seek using any meta search
engine or any search engine. I always start with Google for
these specific searches, and see no need for a meta-search engine.
I recommend you learn Google and AllTheWeb and maybe Teoma and
AltaVista Advanced search.
If you are doing more
complicated search (or you don't get what you want entering
a few words or a phrase), the meta-searchers in the third category
won't help you. You need to build a more complex search than
they can process well, and you need to know the search rules
of the search engine you are using. These basic meta-searchers
do not let you do this well enough to be worth using.
Take a look at these
other drawbacks to them:
Almost none of the freely
available meta-search engines searches Google. Google is the
BEST search engine database.
The third family of tools tend to dumbly pass your search terms
on, without any concern to what happens to your carefully placed
" " or AND, OR or AND NOT, let alone your NEAR or
you + or -.
If your search does not get what you want, all you can do is
add a term and wonder where the meta-search engine is sending
it.
None of the meta-search engines consistently queries all of
the search engine it claims to query. They search what is available
at the instant you submit your query, and you don't know for
sure what it queried until you read the results.
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