MetaCrawler
MetaCrawler is, as its name implies, a metasearch engine. It searches seven of the largest search engines
on the internet. It has advantages over the search engines it employs for a number of reasons. It has access to many more
web pages than any of the individual engines. It consolidates duplicate pages and presents the results in a consistent display for all engines. It doesn't show the commercial messages (ads) that are displayed on the originating
search engines. It has two search modes: (1) Fast and (2) Comprehensive. Both are quick, but Comprehensive is slower.
Yet I'll take that slowness anytime for the results it produces - extremely comprehensive.
You can speed up getting the search results in either mode by limiting the scope of your query.
For example, if you are looking
for a website in your country, set the Limit To option to "your country" and you'll search
only the necessary pages. If you select Sort by Relevance, MetaCrawler consolidates
the ranking scores of all results from all engines and presents a weighted relevancy score for the
site that is very effective. If you select Sort by Location MetaCrawler presents you with a list of
resources organized in a table of contents by geographical source. This feature is very useful in
finding something specific you can associate with a domain location.
Ever wonder what the rest of the world is searching for? Catch a glimpse of some of the
searches being performed on MetaCrawler, at this very moment!
They do have FAQ.
The producers of this service are Erik Selberg ,
Oren Etzioni
and Greg Lauckhart at the University of Washington.
(Last updated 10/11/02)
©2002 ESPPP Inc.
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