Resources for Information Skills
Section contents page Introduction Choosing the right tool for the job Search engines When to use information gateways and specialist databases Google Access to the invisible web Google development How to get the best out of Google Why not always Google? Other search engines Meta-search engines Why use a directory? Overview Summary
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Meta search engines

Meta-search engines are best used as a starting point to show quickly what is available on your topic, or to reduce duplication if you have a very simple query. They are not recommended for complex searches.

Some of the best example of Meta-search engines

Metacrawler  Polymeta  Carrot Clustering Engine  etools.ch  iseek  iZito   Zuula

Advantages:

  • Saves great deal of time.
  • Results are grouped by topic, which assist you to further narrow down the focus of search.
  • Provides a faster view of the high ranking results at the search engines.
  • You are offered new links from other search engines, that you missed before.

Disadvantages:

  • Most of them are limited to simple words or phrases.
  • Their results tend to be limited within 10 to 15 hits from every single search engine. It is likely to miss other relevant informations.
  • Search engines used by the metasearcher may duplicate each other. For instance, allthe web, Altavista and Yahoo, all them use the same database from Yahoo.