[WEB4LIB] metasearch engines

[Christopher Handy]

At 8:28 AM -0600 on 10/23/98 you wrote to WEB4LIB, stating:

|>Dear Colleagues,
|>Having used many search engines over a long time period, I am becoming
|>more interested in metasearch engines (i.e., Dogpile, Metacrawler,
|>Inference Find).  Because we possibly all agree that it is necessary to
|>search more than one engine for the most comprehensive results, I am
|>wondering why metasearch tools aren't used exclusively.
|>

The obvious explanation is simply that not everyone is interested in "the
most comprehensive results." Specifically, I think most college students --
the user group that you mention in your query -- are typically far more
interested in quickly identifying a few highly relevant resources than they
are in collecting every available site devoted to their area of study. To
use textbook terminology, most of these users prefer high precision to high
recall. For their needs single-database searches via AltaVista or Yahoo are
probably more appropriate.

As previous respondents have noted, metasearchers are also subject to lots
of serious technical limitations and basic design flaws. You really do have
to wonder sometimes if they aren't functioning chiefly to compound the
imperfections of the individual search engines (as Ward Price speculated
earlier).  For these reasons I personally seldom use them, and when I work
reference I generally don't suggest their use to students either.

Having said this, I'm wondering if anyone can report on the "Sherlock"
metasearcher that forms an integral part of the just-released Mac operating
system (OS 8.5). I haven't had an opportunity to use it myself and am
curious about how well it works and how effectively new search engine
plug-ins can be integrated into the system, especially those designed by
the user or a third-party developer.

Chris Handy
Indianapolis, IN
charta at inetdirect.net