Metacrawler
Written: Apr 24, 2001
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The Bottom Line
This is the meta search engine and easily among the best of all search engines.
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| Full Review |
Background
I have used the internet heavily now for many years.
Who it Suits and does not Suit
It suits most users looking for specific often hard-to-find information rapidly.
It does not suit non-U.S. users looking for country specific information.
Information
This search engine is a meta engine hence its name. This means it actually searches several other search engines simultaneously for you which avoids you having to do each one separately. It currently uses 13 different engines most of which are well known and of good quality. These are: AltaVista, DirectHit, Excite, FindWhat.com, Google, GoTo.com, Internet Keywords, Kanoodle, LookSmart, Lycos, MetaCatalog, Sprinks by About and Webcrawler.
The general appearance is pleasing and customisable. There are few advertisements.
Use
I use this engine all the time for any search I don’t want to be specific to Australia. You type the keywords in, select your options (any word, all words or all words as a phase) and press Enter. All the results come up very rapidly and you then use your eyes to see if the relevancy is there with each article. The results are also clearly presented and the search engine it came from is also listed.
The relevancy of your results is usually good though there is the occasional spam laden rubbish. It will often give a good number of results for rare search terms because it can draw from the strengths of each major search engine. I almost never get dead links.
Only a limited number of results are extracted from each separate search engine so it isn’t so good if you want to trawl hundreds of results for a term.
It is possible to select specific country results like Australia but this feature is terrible and few results are usually returned.
There’s a useful small area at the top of each results page asking if you are looking for certain similar terms. The intelligent correlation between these similar searches and your search is very good and can make finding the results you want that much easier.
There’s a power search and directory but these features are nothing exciting. The most interesting add-on feature is ‘metaspy’ which lets you anonymously see the searches other people using Metacrawler are doing. This appeals to voyeuristic types (I suppose that now includes me) and lets you discover new internet content if you are bored or the sexual terms eager men are typing in for a laugh.
Why this one?
I have long used dozens of search engines, some of them are even still around but in previous years the search engines were quite appalling. I discovered Metacrawler years ago and found the relevancy to be good enough for me to stick around using it. I have been using it ever since though think now’s a good time to try the others to see if they’re better.
Other Comments
When using any search engine work out how to use the options. Those options, even the basic ones, can make a vast improvement over your success in finding what you want.
When looking for something specific try to think of as many unique or uncommon words associated with that. You should find lots of results that will lead to what you want.
Recommended:
Yes
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About the Author
Location: Adelaide, SA, Australia
Reviews written: 34
Trusted by: 6 members
About Me: Wile. E. Coyote., Genius. erm not really :-)
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