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Meta Search Engines: A Web Searcher's Best Friends

by: Daniel Bazac

I know what you're thinking: Google gives you such accurate results that you don't need any other search tool. Well, let's see about that.

You might - or might not - know that no major search engine indexes ALL the existing Web pages. OpenFind states that it indexes 3.5 billion Web pages, Google claims 2.4 billion, AlltheWeb - 2.1 billion, Inktomi - a little more than 2 billion, WiseNut - 1.5 billion and AltaVista - 1 billion Web pages.

The truth is, nobody knows how wide the Web is. Some say 5 billion pages, some 8 billion, some even more. Anyway, what's definite is that the major search engines (SEs) index only a fraction of the "publicly indexable Web". Moreover, every SE indexes different Web pages, which means if you use only one SE you will miss relevant results that can be found in other search engines.

One way to more effectively search the Web is to use a meta search engine.

What Is A Meta Search Engine?

A meta search engine (also know as multi-threaded engine) is a search tool that sends your query simultaneously to several search engines (SEs), Web directories (WDs) and sometimes to the so-called Invisible (Deep) Web, a collection of online information not indexed by traditional search engines.

After collecting the results, the meta search engine (MSE) will remove the duplicate links and, according to its algorithm, combine/rank the results into a single merged list.

An important note:

Unlike the individual search engines and directories, the meta search engines

Do not have their own databases and
Do not accept URL submissions.

Pros and Cons of Meta Search Engines

Pros: MSEs save searchers a considerable amount of time by sparing them the trouble of running a query in each search engine. The results - most of the time - are extremely relevant. MSEs can be used by Webmasters to find their site's presence, rankings and link popularity in the major SEs.

Cons: Because some SEs or WDs do not support advanced searching techniques such as quotation marks to enclose phrases or Boolean operators, no (or irrelevant) results from those SEs will appear in the MSEs results list when those techniques are used.

MSEs Come In Four Flavors:

"Real" MSEs which aggregate/rank the results in one page
"Pseudo" MSEs type I which exclusively group the results by search engine
"Pseudo" MSEs type II which open a separate browser window for each search engine used and
Search Utilities, software search tools.

The following provides detailed information on each of the four MSE types, along with my ranking:

1. "Real" MSEs

These real MSEs simultaneously search the major search engines, aggregate the results, eliminate the duplicates and return the most relevant matches, according to the engine's algorithm.

Following is a list of a few meta search engines that you might find useful. It's by no means complete, but it might help you find what you need.

(The criteria I used to determine the best MSEs were:

the amount and the relevance of the results,

the capability to handle advanced searches,

the ability to enable users to customize searches,

the speed of their searches and others.)

ez2www [ http://ez2www.com ]

Searches the best SEs - AlltheWeb, Google, AltaVista, Teoma, Wisenut - and directories - Yahoo! and Open Directory. Through its "Advanced Search" function it also searches a small part of the Invisible (Deep) Web. It also searches news, newsgroups, MP3, images and many, many more. Provides excellent results in a very neat interface. Created in September 2000 by the French search engine developer Holomedia. THE best!

Vivísimo [ http://vivisimo.com ]

Uses the clustering technology, meaning matches are organized in folders. Don't like the frames? Just modify the size of both the upper and the left frames. This MSE was created by researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University. Advanced searching options available: exact phrase, Boolean operators, fields searching (domain, host, title, URL, etc.) and more. A jewel for the serious searcher.

Query Server [ http://www.queryserver.com/web.htm ]

Searches an impressive list of 11 SEs - everything important except Google. But don't worry: Query Server searches Yahoo!, Netscape and AOL, all partially powered by Google. This is another example of the clustering technology. Highly customizable metasearch tool. You can modify the appearance of the results page, selecting the search engines, the amount of results, their timeout, etc. It supports quotation marks to enclose phrases, the Boolean syntax and parentheses. Very professional.

Infonetware [ http://www.infonetware.com ]

Searches the Web and provides relevant results, organized in topics, in a very clean interface. This MSE is based in Edinburgh, Scotland and is a very good tool.

Metaseek [http://www.pcdigest.net/metasearch/en/main.shtml]

Excellent MSE from Ukraine. Searches major international and local search engines. Besides the Web you can search images, MP3, FTP files, news and more. You can use "Phrase" (""), "natural language" processing, Boolean logic and field searching (by URL, title, site/domain or link). Very nice.

IBoogie [ http://iboogie.com ]

Uses a minimalist design. This MSE "performs intelligent clustering of results". It searches the Web, the Invisible (Deep) Web, images, video and audio files.

Vinden.NL [ http://www.vinden.nl ]

Searches "the best," providing very good results in a clean interface. This MSE comes from the Netherlands.

Search Online [ http://www.searchonline.info ]

Uses an excellent selection of search engines and directories. This MSE provides relevant results in a relatively crowded interface. For each result you can see the search engine where the hit was found, and its ranking.

Meta Bear [ www.metabear.com ]

Provides relevant results from both international and Russian sites. Be sure you type the query in the "Search The World" box.

Web Scout [ http://www.webscout.com ]

Searches the Web, news, newsgroups, auctions, MP3 files and jobs. This Australian MSE utilizes the major SEs - except Google - and provides relevant matches in a clean results list.

argosa:de [ http://www.argosa.de ]

Searches 17 international and local SEs. I suggest you avoid checking the boxes of Acoon, Abacho, GoClick and ah_ha.com search engines, because they give many irrelevant hits. This is Germany's first MSE, and provides excellent results organized by relevance, source (quelle) or title.

Experts Avenue [ http://www.expertsavenue.com ]

Searches different search engines simultaneously for Web pages, auctions, jobs and forums and provides very relevant results in a neat interface. Enables online language translation of Web pages. Click on "Translate" and you will be brought to AltaVista's Babelfish translation service, powered by SYSTRAN.

InfoGrid [ http://www.infogrid.com ]

Provides excellent results in an easy to read layout, despite a very confusing Home Page crowded and with

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