Internet/Web Searching: Metasearch Engines

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Scope

• Metasearch Engines are programs that search multiple, other search engines, rather than their own database of downloaded Web pages and other documents on the Internet.
• These programs are able to utilize some of the specific functionality of the search engines that they employ, but no Metasearch Engine can utilize the full capabilities of every search engine..
• The best Metasearch Engines:
  • Support and utilize the searching syntax of each seach engine, including Booleans, wildcards, phrase searching, pluses and minuses, field searching, proximity operators, and date limits.
  • Can consolidate and remove duplicates from the results.
  • Search many search engines, including Google, Altavista, FastSearch, and Northern Light.
  • Allow you to select which search engines to use.
  • Can search in multiple languages.
  • Automatically ranks results.
• Drawbacks
  • You usually get a small subset of the possible relevant records on individual search engines.
  • Not all of the search syntax (functions, operators, etc.) is supported for each search engine.

Examples of Meta Search Engines

• Ixquick - http://ixquick.com/
• ProFusion (Intelliseek Web Search) - http://www.profusion.com/
• Dogpile - http://www.dogpile.com/
• MetaCrawler - http://www.metacrawler.com/
• Mamma - http://www.mamma.com/

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