Meta Searchengine

Comparison of Meta search engines


Query Server:


Input parameters available:

Matching by:
All Keywords present in the given string or by
Individual keywords.

No. of results from each engine:
10, 20, 30 or 40

Result clustering:
By content, by site or by both.

Result style:
Short or long.

Stop searching after:
5, 10, 15 sec or never.


List of available search engines:

AOL, Gigablast, MSN, Lycos, Hotbot, Netscape, Open directory, Ask Jeeves, Wisenut.


Features:
· Uses clustering to group the results based on their type and displays results into groups in readable format.
· Relevance percentage is given to each result before its link and that percentage is specific to that group.
· It supports quotation marks to enclose phrases, Boolean syntax and parentheses.

Drawback:
· Misses out yahoo and Google search engines.








SnakeT:


Input parameters available:

No extra parameters available


List of Search engines available:

Google, Yahoo, Altavista, Alltheweb, Toema, Looksmart, Overture, MSN, About, AOL, findWhat, Gigablast, Espottine, A9, Bloglines, Entireweb, Idearenews, Ixquick, Mamma, Netscape, Wisenut, Scirus.


Features:
· Uses clustering to group the results based on their type. the user can personalize the clusters.
· Presents the top 180 results from the selected search engines.
· Each link in the result is followed by search engine name from which that result has been obtained along with position of the result in that search engine.
· It gives a greater than (>) sign to the links whose web address contains the keyword.


Drawbacks:
· Gives exactly 180 results irrespective of number of search engines selected. If user cannot find his desired result he will have to change his query.

















MyNetCrawler:


Input parameters available:

Required to give priorities to all the available search engines.


List of search engines available:

Altavista, Hotbot, Open directory, Excite, Fastsearch, ePilot,
Google, Lycos, MSN, Webcrawler, Northern light, Yahoo.


Features:

· Presents results grouped by search engine in one long scrollable list.

Drawback:
· If the user wants to customize, he has to give priorities to all the 12 search engines.
· Irrespective of the customized preferences the order of results is not changed. If user gives Hotbot first priority still its results are displayed at the last (page 5). Google results are always displayed first (page 1).























EZ2find:


Input parameters available:

No. of results per page:
10, 20, 30, 50 or 100.

Depth of the page:
1, 2, 3, 5 or 10.

Time out per page:
1, 2, 5, 10, 30 or 60.

Search language:
English, Arabic, Greek, Russian etc.


List of search engines:
Wisenut, Exalead, Toema, Dmoz, Gigablast,
MSN, Google, Yahoo.


Features:

· Uses clustering to group the results.
· Provides specialized search ex: arts, business, sports etc.
· User can use adult filtering.
· User can get news and stock information of a particular country. Based on this information the results from country are given priority.
· It rates the results by giving 0 to 5 stars.
· It provides quick view which enables the user to have a look into the result before the complete page is viewed.
· User can give feedback.














Infogrid:


Input parameters available:

1. Display results in :
Current window or new window.

2. No. of results per page:
10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or 100.

3. Time out:
2, 5, 7, 15 or never.

4. Search by using:
All keywords, any keywords or phrase.


List of available search engines:

About, Ah_Ha, Alltheweb, AOL, Entireweb, FindWhat, Goclick,
Google, Kanoodle, MSN, ODP, Overture, Wisenut, yahoo.


Features:

· Gives results in the form of Link followed by relevance percentage along with the engine which gave it.
· User can sort the view according to relevance, source and title.
· User can go for similar pages option available with each result which gives more similar pages, removes irrelevant pages.


Drawbacks:

· Very confusing homepage crowded with frames.
· Preference cannot be set at the starting. The user has to use the search then he can set them in the result page.









Table for the query - List of management colleges in india, 6 keywords


MSE
QUERY
SERVER
SNAKET
MYNET
CRAWLER
EZ2FIND
INFOGRID
INPUT PARA-METERS

SE selected:

Gigablast,
MSN,
Wisenut.

Match:

Any item

No. of results/page

20

Result style

Long

Clustering type:

Context

Timeout:

15

SE selected:

AOL,
Gigablast,
MSN,
WiseNut.

Preferences:

Default


SE selected:

Dmoz,
Google,
MSN,
Yahoo,
Wisenut,
Toema,
Gigablast,
Exalead.

No.of results/page

10

Depth:

1

Timeout:

10

Language:

English

SE selected:

Yahoo,
Google,
MSN,
AOL,
Wisenut.

Search:

any

Timeout:

15

No.of.
results/page

10

Display :

Current
Window.
OUTPUT
PATTERN


Relevance %
Followed by link.

Link followed by SE: position in SE.

Link in its SE

Link followed by star rating followed by SE: position

Link followed by relevance % and SE.
TIME
---
0.28 sec
---
3 sec
---
POSITION
6
5
*
23
37

* Result found after modifying the query.