The Difference Between Search And Meta Search
Posted on December 20, 2007 - Filed Under Computers and Technology
We search the World Wide Web every day, but few of us realize that there’s more than one way to search the web efficiently. You can either use standard search engines or metasearch engines. Here’s a guide to the difference between them.
How Search Engines Work
Search engines work by collecting information on web pages. They either do this by collecting information in directories from manual submission, or by getting the information automatically, through search engine spiders. Search engine spiders are little programs that crawl the internet looking for new or updated web pages. Some search engine spiders collect information about page titles, while others capture all the content on a page. Once they find this information, it is added to the search engine’s index, which is a database of everything that search engine has found on the web.
When you type in a search term, another piece of software quickly searches the database to produce the information you want. This information is only as up to date as the last crawl by a search engine spider. Although search engine spiders work every day, there are millions of web pages to catalog, so the index may not always have the latest information. You can find this yourself by clicking on a relevant link in the search results.
How Metasearch Engines Work
A metasearch engine also uses a software program, but instead of collecting information directly, the metasearch engine uses the information collected by other search engines to give your results. Effectively, the metasearch engine searches all the other search engines for you. Where you might have to search Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask and others separately, a metasearch engine will search for your terms on all of these search engines and others and combine them on a web page.
In most cases, the metasearch engine will eliminate any duplicate results, so that the results list contains only one entry for each web page that matches your search terms. It will tell you which search engines it has pulled results from so that you can click on the links to search individual search engines as well (if you still want to). Just like other search engines, the metasearch engines use an algorithm to determine which results are most relevant to your search. This may result from finding out which searches on the individual search engines resulted in the most clicks.
Which Is Better?
So that’s how search engines and metasearch engines work, in a nutshell. However, most users will want to know which type of search engine is better. The answer is that each type of search engine has advantages. A standard search engine allows you to use a wide range of search operators to refine your search. If you already know which search engine you like, then this may be a good option. A metasearch engine is great for getting an overview of search engine results on a particular topic and you may even find results from search engines that are new to you. And one of the big advantages of metasearch is that it can save you time, which is always a benefit.
Greg Aldrich created the Widow Metasearch Engine in 1996 and continues to host and manage it today. The metasearch engine collates results from multiple search engines by relevancy. Widow provides clustered search results as well as traditional blended results. Specialty search areas include image search, blog search, and more, all based on its powerful metasearch engine. Widow also tracks the top searched keywords on the Internet.
Tags: meta search, meta search engine, search engine
Related Posts
- Seo Secrets - 4 Little-known Ways To Boost Your Seo
- Why Starting A Relationship With The Search Engines Can Be Hard
- Why Starting A Relationship With The Search Engines Can Be Hard
- Why Starting A Relationship With The Search Engines Can Be Hard
- Seo Web Design - 5 Tips To Design A Seo-friendly Website
Comments
Leave a Reply
