[WEB4LIB] Thought about metasearch engines

[Kevin S. Clarke]

Thomas Dowling wrote:

> Just a thought about the thread on metasearch engines:  Lycos, Excite,
> AltaVista et al. are increasingly using their search engines to leverage
> their moves into the Portal business [...some edited...]  Whatever success
> they have doing this is then used to draw advertisers, who in turn end up
> funding the search engine, along with everything else.
>
> So, if some metasearch engine really takes off (say, it gets built into a new
> operating system), aren't the search engines whose results get forwarded
> more or less obligated to try to cut off the meta engine's supply of free
> search results?

Interesting thought... I did some experimenting with Apple's new Sherlock and
found that the advertisements that display along with each hit are from the
search engine from which it came.  If I look at a site link returned by Excite,
there is an add from Excite (it even has the Excite brand on the  ad).  However
if I look at a hit that was returned by something like the Consumer Reports
engine (which if it is like the magazine doesn't take advertising) or from
Apple's TILs (technical information libraries) there is no advertisement
included with the hit.  Maybe these metasearch engines (like Apple's Sherlock)
get around the problem of using the individual engines' results without giving
them the opportunity to advertise by including the search engines'
advertisements along with the results of the search.  That would explain the
ads in Sherlock; the individual search engines have made an agreement to allow
their results to be used as long as the megasearch engine (in this case
Sherlock) includes a way for them to make the money they need to keep their
site up and running.

My 2 cents...  Kevin