Lesson 2:  Metasearch Engines

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As you learned in lesson one, Metasearch engines don’t have their own databases where information is compiled.  Instead, they search multiple other search engines at the same time.  These search engines are a great way for you to figure out which individual search engine delivers the best results for your particular needs.  

Metasearch engines display their search results in one of two ways.  In the first, the single list, the results have been combined, and if two individual engines find the same site, one of them is discarded.  This is easier to use and weed through than the second way, which is the multiple list.  In a multiple list, each individual engine’s list of sites is displayed separately, and all sites are listed, even if they’re duplicates. 

I have always liked using Metasearch engines when I’m in a hurry because they are pretty fast, and when the results are displayed in a single list it can save me the time of searching all of the separate individual search engines. However, Metasearch engines don’t offer the advanced searching options that many of the individual search engines offer. 

One of the things I did not realize is the vast amount of metasearch engines there are out there. A few out of the many I found were: kartoo, surfwax, clusty, icerocket, and izito. 

During the tutorial, the assignment for this lesson I was to choose two different metasearch engines and search for "9/11 commission report" and then compare the results.  I chose clusty and izito for my searches.  Clusty returned a 1,641,000 results while izito pulled in 2,910, 833.  Of the top ten results, only four were the same. 

I encourage you to try this on your own with different search terms. 

Lesson 1 Search Engines   Lesson 2 Metasearch Engines   Lesson 3  Subdirectories   Lesson 4  Library Gateways  

Lesson 5  Evaluating WebPages   Lesson 6  Creating a Search Strategy   Lesson 7  Basic Search Tips  

Lesson 8  Boolean Logic   Lesson 9  Field Searching   Lesson 10  Troubleshooting Lesson 11  Clusty Search Engine 

     Chapter 12  All Things Google   Lesson 13  All Things Yahoo