INTRODUCTION

• 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, AlltheWeb, and Yahoo.
  • Allow you to select which search engines to use.
  • Can search in multiple languages.
  • Automatically ranks results.

ADVANTAGES & DISADVANTAGES

• Advantages
  • You get a general sense of what is available on a subject.
  • They are good for "fast and dirty" searching, where you need to get some kind of basic result quickly.
• Disadvantages
  • 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. In other words, a metasearch engine usually does not or can not use the full sophisticated capabilites of each search engine employed.

MAJOR METASEARCH ENGINES

METASEARCH ENGINE	NOTES
Ixquick ixquick.com	Can translate the syntax of your search into that of individual search engines. Supports most of the syntax of the search engines it uses. Eliminates duplicates. Searches Ask Jeeves/Teoma, EntireWeb, FindWhat, Gigablast, Go, LookSmart, MSN, Netscape, Open Directory, Overture
ez2Find www.ez2find.com	Searches:  AlltheWeb, Teoma, Google, Yahoo!, AltaVista, Wisenut, ODP, and MSN. Says that the searches, "...parse the results, remove the duplicates, include links to relevant directory categories (directory results from the Open Directory) and to clustered results."
Mamma.com www.mamma.com	Searches Google, Lycos, MSN, Teoma, and more.
Search.com www.search.com	Claims that it can "search once for results from over 1,000 search engines, Web directories, auctions, storefronts, news sources, discussion groups, reference sites, and more."
MetaCrawler metacrawler.com	Supports some of the syntax of the search engines it uses. Searches Lycos, WebCrawler, Infoseek, Excite, Thunderstone, AltaVista, GoTo, and Yahoo
DogPile www.dogpile.com	Uses some of the syntax of the search engines it searches. Searches Google,Yahoo, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, About, LookSmart, Overture, Teoma, FindWhat
ProFusion www.profusion.com	More sophisticated tool than most. Searches AllTheWeb, AltaVista, About, AOL, LookSmart, Lycos, Metacrawler, MSN, Netscape, Raging Search, Teoma, WiseNut
Surfwax www.surfwax.com	Claims that it "can use a site's existing search capability as part of the meta-search process. Thus, we are able to retrieve from non-subscription portions of what is commonly called the, "invisible web."
Turbo10 www.turbo10.com	From the UK Also searches many "deep" or "hidden" web resources.
Vivisimo www.vivisimo.com	Targets MSN, Netscape, Lycos, Looksmart, Wisenut, Open Directory, Overture, GigaBlast, and LII, along with severa news sources.

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