Metasearch Engines

These search engines search other search engines (instead of each web site) to grab results from their databases. Results are displayed in either a single list (where duplicate entries are removed) or multiple lists where each engine's results are displayed separately (duplicate entries are not removed). I have never used any of the metasearch engines discussed in this lesson so I went to Mamma and Dogpile to see what the difference is between metasearch engines and individual search engines (which is what I usually use). I noticed that the engine the site was retrieved from was listed out to the side. I never would have noticed that before. Because the metasearchers are able to do this, it is a good way to see which search engines are giving you the most and best results for your search. It is best to use metasearch engines when in a hurry, when conducting a simple search or when not having any luck pulling up documents through individual search engines. One bad thing about metasearch engines is that you do not have the same search options you do with individual search engines. In other words you can't really narrow your search or perform advanced searches with metasearchers. However, they are really fast. Popular metasearch engines are found at Dogpile and Mamma.