Dig Deep With Meta-engines
Given the advantages and disadvantages inherent to particular search engines, it isn't out of the ordinary to run searches through multiple sites before finding the answers you need. A batch of sites known as meta-engines step up to the challenge for you.
Meta-engine sites go beyond standard search engines by submit queries to other indices, combining the results, and presenting them all to users at once. In other words, meta-engines don't search the Web themselves but concentrate their heavy lifting on sorting through the results produced by others. Sometimes the strategy works, such as when you're looking for something off-the-wall. Other times a meta-engine gives you 1,000 hits on a relatively general query, anything more becomes a textbook example of the law of diminishing returns.
The number of meta-engines around today makes us wonder how long it will be until we see a meta-meta-engine. We found nearly a dozen competing for our attention, at least a few of which merit a stop for any fan of searching.
SavvySearch gets a special mention for its attempt to make the most of the meta-search idea. The main SavvySearch page lists a wide range of different subject areas to customize which search engines the site will use for your query. Click News, and SavvySearch will comb through a set of news-oriented engines. Choose E-mail Addresses to simultaneously search several directories.
You, can also customize your own set of favorite search engines for SavvySearch to remember when you come back to visit. Click the Customize link and follow the directions on the screen to build a list.
Alas, grabbing a fistful of search engines at once doesn't necessarily mean you will find the right site right away. However, SavvySearch will doggedly continue on command Clicking the "search more engines" link moved the meta-tool to a new set of prospects and success.
Ask Jeeves combines a meta-search engine with a natural language centered query approach for answering basic questions. The site encourages users to type search terms in a human question format: "What is the capital of Vermont?," for example, or "Is Elvis dead?" The results page returns a range of questions that may or may not resemble yours. Pick the best one and click for the answer.
If Ask Jeeves doesn't locate a suitable response on its own, below the more complete questions are similar matches found through other search engines. The drop-down menus next to each search engine's name contain the names of sites found on that particular index that might have something to do with your query.
An attractive and fun site, Ask Jeeves is best for the sort of fact-based questions that have definite answers. More complex searches seem destined for frustration here, even in the choices culled from rival directories.
Billing itself as the "mother of all search engines," Mamma.com submits queries to 10 search engines at the same time, including Yahoo!, Northern Light, and HotBot. Duplicate entries are eliminated, and the results are presented quickly.
In order to conduct a search for a phrase, you will have to visit Mamma's advanced search options. The advanced page also lets you choose which search engines to use and allows you to determine the timeout value, or the maximum number of seconds Mamma spends hunting. A longer timeout will let the meta-engine wait for all 10 of the other engines to return full results for Mamma to prune and present.
MetaCrawler, today known as Go2Net, includes similar options in its advanced search screen. MetaCrawler will also search Usenet newsgroups if desired, and it can filter results by geographic (domain) origin or rank them by search engine.
If you like a particular set of advanced MetaCrawler Options, you can click the Customize link to save them as a cookie on your machine so that the site always remembers how you like to do things.
The Profusion meta-searcher takes advantage of the Boolean capabilities of eight different search engines to allow users to search across the Web with relatively complex queries. You can choose exactly which search engines to use or plow through all of them.
Profusion seemed a bit slow when we visited, and we had mixed results with finding relevant sites. However, one interesting feature was the Check Links option, which makes sure the results up to a specified number are not broken links.
If you still haven't found the meta-searcher of your dreams try one of the many other sites such as Debriefing, which we found to be very fast, or Dogpile, with its list of search engines that are easy to customize.