Meet the Metasearch Engines

From Bare Bones 101: A Basic Tutorial for Searching the Web

Metasearch engines do not crawl the web compiling their own searchable databases. Instead, they search the databases of multiple sets of individual search engines simultaneously, from a single site and using the same interface. Metasearchers provide a quick way of finding out which engines are retrieving the best results for you in your search.

One of my favorite Metasearch engines is Dogpile. Dogpile was launched in 1996 but it is currently operated by InfoSpace. Dogpile searches the Web by searching the databases of the Internet’s top search engines: Google, Yahoo! Search, Ask, Live Search, About, MIVA, LookSmart, and more.

On the main page of Dogpile are options to search for “Web”, “Images,” “Audio,” “Video,” “News,” “White Pages,” and “Yellow Pages”. First you type in your keyword (such as Portland Trailblazers) and then the results of your search will be listed by relevance. The results display a short description of the site and which search engine database retrieved the listing.

Some special features:

• The site will offer suggested spellings for words that may be misspelled and automatically corrects commonly misspelled keywords.
• Dogpile blocks potentially explicit content for multimedia searches in Moderate setting and for all searches when in Heavy setting.
• For most search results, Dogpile provides you with a list alternative search terms under the heading “Are you looking for?”
• The Recent Searches area allows you to view your previous search terms (15) and then click to retrieve past results quickly without having to re-enter in your search terms into the search box.

The only downside is that Dogpile ‘s results include sponsored (paid) listings for some keywords. Students might not be aware that these are sponsored links since they are NOT very well marked and interspersed throughout the search results. When I searched for Portland Trailblazers, the second listing was a sponsored results for a “trailblazer” car. Not exactly the type of listing that should be at the top of a search about a basketball team!!!

Like the other leading search engines, Dogpile primarily makes money from sponsored links and advertisements but the fact that they include Sponsored Links throughout the search is fairly new and may deter me from recommending the site in the future. The jury is still out on that one.

Some other Metasearch engines to check out:

• Mamma – http://www.mamma.com/ “The mother of all search engines”
• Clusty – http://clusty.com/ (formally Vivismo)
• Kartoo – http://www.kartoo.com/ A visual search engine that displays results like a mind-map.
• Listing of Metasearch engines from Search Engine Watch