Dogpile is the most popular meta-search engine, serving up results from Google, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, and others. Dogpile is one of four meta-search tools owned by Infospace, the company that owns several excellent online phone directories. Infospace's other properties are Metacrawler, Excite and Webcrawler. These sites are primarily about earning money, but they have dramatically improved as search tools over the past year. All four use the same search technology; Dogpile is the one designed for a general consumer audience.
Dogpile received a slick update in September, 2003, streamlining its look and adding new customization options and advanced search features. Dogpile has licensed Vivisimo's clustering technology, using it to group results by category - a positive way to help narrow and focus the results of a search, letting you drill down easier.
To Dogpile's credit, paid placements are now clearly labeled at the bottom of each individual listing, removing the ambiguity of whether the results come from advertisers or genuine search results. In the past, Dogpile grouped its results by source - for example, you would see eight results from Google and ten from Overture. Now you have a choice: you may view the results by relevance or by search engine, which makes it easier to assess your results. Above the query box are buttons for choosing to search web pages, images, audio, multimedia, news, and shopping. Dogpile has also added some phrase searching, Boolean operators, adult and domain filtering, and language selection, but only from the advanced search menu.
Another change, which is a downside, is that you can no longer choose which search engines you want results from. No longer can you customize the results, and without that option, you must now view the sponsored results. At least you can choose to search results by search engine, letting you skip over the paid-placement partners like Overture. Dogpile is a tool worth trying again. Newly acquired Metacrawler and Webcrawler are now virtually identical to Dogpile, while Excite offers a portal view including news, stock quotes, and personalization options.
Highbeam, formerly Researchville, uses an excellent collection of search tools, gives you excellent and unusual results - the stuff you simply do not find elsewhere. You may target reference sites, dictionaries, encyclopedias, discussion forums. The more you use this tool, the more you will like its focused meta-searching. Spend some time with this one. It is truly different and one to watch.
For years, HotBot was one of the leading search engines for years. It recently re-invented itself, becoming more of a meta-search tool than a general search engine. HotBot provides easy access to three of the Web's best and largest crawler-based search engines - Google, Ask Jeeves, and its own HotBot engine. This "3-in-l" option has been operating since December, 2002. HotBot is not truly a meta-search tool either, because it does not blend the results of the three search tools. It allows you to enter one search term and get results from different web search engines all in one place. This is important because each of these databases are unique, so you can get a wide crosssection of results in one simple search, saving time - and visual proof that all search tools do not bring back the same results.
HotBot originally debuted in 1996 and put itself on the map with its colorful interface and strong results from Inktomi. When the company bought DirectHit in the late 1990s, HotBot became an incredibly useful tool for spotting where previous searchers preferred to go. When acquired by Lycos, the company failed to make searching a priority, and HotBot was switched to a portal site. Now it is back as the 3-in-l search tool.
HotBot has some innovative aspects. You can customize its appearance and you can use the filter preferences button to select limits for adding languages, word/phrase limits, domain site limits and more. If you select a filter that does not exist on the tool you run it on, it will tell you the filter is not supported. Another nice feature is that there are no ads or pop-ups on the front page. Be aware, however, that when you search Google or Ask Jeeves/Teoma on HotBot, you lose the significant additional output content and most of the advanced features these sites offer directly. For quickie comparisons, HotBot is a very useful tool.
Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article. Articleinput.com is a free articles resource thus practically any visitor can submit an article. However if you notice any copyrighted material, please contact us and we will remove the article(s) in discussion right away.
Note: This article was sent to us by: Landon Griffith at 08282010
1. How does the indexer of a search engine actually work
All articles are property of their respective authors. Please read our Privacy Policy!
© 2009 ArticleInput.com.
Partners: Damenmode