Searching the Internet:
Recommended Sites and Search Techniques
Meta Search Engines
Meta search engines simultaneously search multiple search engines. They are also sometimes referred to as parallel search engines, multithreaded search engines, or mega search engines.
Most meta engines return a single list of results from multiple sources, usually with the duplicate files removed. These engines retrieve a certain maximum number of files allowed by the individual engines it has searched, cut off after a certain point as the search is processed. The cut-off may be determined by the number of documents retrieved, or by the amount of time the meta engine spends at the other sites. Some of these services give the user a certain degree of control over these factors.
All of this has two implications:
- These engines return only a limited number of the documents available to be retrieved from the individual engines they have searched
- Results retrieved by these engines can be highly relevant, since they are usually grabbing the first items from the relevancy-ranked list of hits returned by the individual search engines
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Meta Searching: Pros and Cons
Pros
- useful when you want to retrieve a relatively small number of relevant results
- an excellent choice for obscure topics
- a good option when you are not having luck finding what you want when you search
- appropriate when you want to get an overall picture of what is available on the Web on your topic
Cons:
- use is limited primarily to simple queries
- little or no field searching is available
- these engines return a limited number of results that do not represent the totality of results from any source engine
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Most meta search engines remove duplicate files so that you don't have to view the same result multiple times. Don Busca is a good one to try.
Don Busca -
http://www.donbusca.com/
Use Don Busca when...
- You want the convenience of a meta search engine that searches multiple sources simultaneously
- Your topic is made up of multiple concepts
- Your topic is somewhat obscure so a search across multiple sources might help
Special Features:
- Simultaneously searches several major search engines and subject directories
- With each result, also offers a cached version, a link to the site archive in the Wayback Machine, site info from a variety of sources and various bookmark management options
Exercise: Meta searching
Query: Does violence on televsion have an effect children?
Search: +violence
+television +children
A couple of other recommended meta search engines:
- Fazzle
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http://www.fazzle.com/
Searches several search services on the Web; also offers specialty searches of downloads, images, videos and other topics from the deep Web
- Findelio
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http://findelio.com/
Searches a handful of popular engines and includes a list of related searches along with each set of results
- Yooci
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http://www.yooci.com/
Retrieves no more than 250 results for any search
You can see a list of additional meta engines by visiting
Internet Search Engines.
You have almost completed this tutorial! There is one more topic to consider, and it is covered on the Internet Tutorials site. This is an important phenomenon of Web searching, so let's read up on it now: the deep Web >>
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