Metacrawler

[Theobald, Matthew]

Hello all,

Be sure to customize metacrawler.  That is it's most powerful feature.
MC has been around for a couple years now but I don't think they have as sophisticated a "brand identity"
marketing strategy (or dollars) as Yahoo, Excite, and Hotbot have.
Who named Dogpile???

About MC-
Assuming that about 80% of the user population only looks at the first two pages of hits in one search engine
when searching, then metacrawler demonstrates a measurable increase in scope and relevancy.

Why?

You can set MC to search the first three pages of the search engines it queries.
After the information in collated, multiple hits are ranked at the top.

In the time it would require to cut and paste the same keyword in the several engines, MC queries, generates and
collates the results in approximately the same time it would require to search one. (mind that most users would
only perform this function visually)

MC is not perfect. But if you want broad overview it is very, very good.

Then again it always depends on the users choice of keywords and  alternative vocabularies when searching.

Northern Lights is another up and comer with a good way of distributing hits into containers by domain and other
criteria. www.nlsearch.com

If you have not seen webtaxi.com then you should. They have cataloged over 2,500 engines by subject.  Be sure to
check out the database dispatcher.  It is JAVA only, and the interface is a bit clumsy, but a veteran navigator
should adapt easily.

Cheers,

Matt Theobald

Applications Developer
Access Indiana Information Network
http://www.state.in.us

Jim Richards wrote:

> It was mentioned a week or so ago.  I use it quite often but it's not my favorite.  I prefer Dogpile, Lycos,
> and HotBot.
>
> Jim Richards    Network Administrator
> Naperville Public Libraries
>
> Cathy M. Clark-Wright wrote:
>
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> > Does anyone out there use Metacrawler?  I've found it to be a pretty
> > good general search engine, but I never seem to see it mentioned
> > anywhere.
> >
> > Cathy Wright, USDOE, Albany, OR
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> > note:           Opinions expressed are my own and do not reflect any policy or position of the U.S. DOE.
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