Meta Search Category Archive
Conflicting Overlap
I seem to be on a roll lately in finding Web pages that are not indexed by Google and are only found by one search engine. Yesterday I was exploring LibraryThing, a social networking and book cataloging site. I became curious as to how well the search engines covered the personal pages that people create in a social networking site like LibraryThing. So I took a look at two user profiles, grabbed a unique-looking phrase from the profile page and checked to see which, if any, of the main Web search engines could find it. Each page was found by...
Missing Pieces at Dogpile
Dogpile has been redesigned and has added the ability to easily see which results come from Google, Yahoo!, or Ask Jeeves. Clicking the button for one or more of the search engines (in the blue bar at the top) opens up a column with the top results from that search engine and those records not available from the others search engines (at least on their first page) are highlighted. In addition, to demonstrate the lack of overlap between the first page of results at each of the three, Dogpile has introduced a graphic "missing pieces tool." This shows which results...
Infospace to Add MSN Search
Dogpile and other Infospace search properties will add MSN Search to Google, Ask Jeeves, and Yahoo! this summer according to a company press release. With that addition, Dogpile (and other Infospace brands like Webcrawler and Metacrawler) will be the only major meta search engine to include the four primary search engines. Most meta search engines do not have contracts with all four....
Ixquick Redesign
Metasearch engine Ixquick has launched a redesigned site. In their press release [pdf] mentions a re-engineered algorithm, an updated user interface, an international phone directory, and results honing which lets users remove certain results from the list. Ixquick does not include results from Google but does include Yahoo!, MSN, Ask Jeeves, Gigablast, and WiseNut....
Clusty Adds U.S. Government Database
Clusty, Vivisimo's new clustering meta search engine, has added a new government search available both as a tab and a direct search site. It includes FirstGov, various think tanks, U.S. political news, and some subject-specific collections....
Clusty from Vivisimo
Vivisimo has launched a new search site called Clusty which provides another look at Vivisimo's clustering capabilities. A nice, new design, with tabs for Web, News, Images, Shopping, Encyclopedia, and Gossip, the underlying databases are not new or original. What is new is that packaging. For those that like the clustering, meta-search approach, Clusty is well worth a visit....
InfoSpace Offers Dogpile Toolbar
InfoSpace is introducing a toolbar with their meta search engine Dogpile. It only works in Internet Explorer 5.01 or higher and on Windows. The press release notes that the toolbar gives meta search engine results along with U.S. yellow and white pages, dictionary, thesaurus, stock quotes, public records, horoscopes, maps, and other options. It can be customized by the user as to the default search and which buttons to display....
BullsEye Discontinued
Intelliseek has "discontinued sales and support of its BullsEye Plus and BullsEye Pro products." And though the statement does not say so, the free BullsEye is gone as well....
InfoSpace Gets Google
True search engines do not always like meta search engines that seem to freeload on their hard-built databases and yet contribute not cash to the process. Google usually blocks meta search engines from retrieving Google's results, but now they have reached an agreement with InfoSpace to include regular search results and ads from Google's AdWords database on their meta search engines including Dogpile, Excite, WebCrawler, MetaCrawler, and InfoSpace. See the InfoSpace press release or the one from Google....
Excite Goes Meta
Although I still consider Excite a "dead" search engine since it no longer gathers, builds, and makes searchable its own database, the site lives on. Previously just serving results from Overture, new owner InfoSpace has now made it a meta search engine with results from several ad databases (Overture, FindWhat, Sprinks) and from others including AltaVista, Inktomi, LookSmart, and eventually FAST. Unfortunately, it does not identify the source of each hit unless you look very carefully at the link URL. See the Excite description or the InfoSpace press release....
InfoSpace to Include FAST
Fast Search & Transfer announces an agreement with meta search engine provider InfoSpace that means FAST results will begin appearing on InfoSpace meta search engines including Dogpile, MetaCrawler, and Excite. See also the InfoSpace press release....
InfoSpace to Buy Excite
Excite@Home announces its intent to sell Excite's domain names, trademarks, and user traffic to InfoSpace. If the bankruptcy court approves and this sale goes through, traffic to the Excite.com site will go to InfoSpace's meta search engines. Excite@Home retains the old Excite search engine technology, but where and when it will be used remains to be seen....
InfoSpace Relaunches Dogpile
For the first time since 1996, Dogpile has been redesigned. Improvements include faster loading of the home page and results pages. InfoSpace users should also note that the search box on the main InfoSpace page uses Dogpile for its Web Search....
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