Metacrawler.com Can Be Used, But "Caveat Emptor"
Written: Aug 3, 2001 (Updated Aug 4, 2001)
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The Bottom Line
Although Metacrawler has some good search filters, it failed me in it's main mission: to provide me many search results across many search engines.
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While we tend to use one or two search engines out of habit, and we may know that some search engines are better for certain types of searches than others, there are times when we want to search the search engines for what we need. It's at times like these we should use a special type of search engine known as a metasearch engine. Just as Metaphysics deals with the world beyond what we can physically examine, a metasearch engine deals with search engines on a higher level. The metasearch (or meta search) engine I used to use has been history for a while, so I have been searching for a suitable alternative. Just as there are thousands of search engines, there are large numbers of metasearch engines on the Web. Today I decided to try Metacrawler.com.
Last night I used the MSN search engine-- I FINALLY found it!-- to do a search on "reprint rights" and a great number of entries came back to me-- at least ten pages worth. Since a search engine is supposed to be searching across a number of search engines I expected to see many more search results by orders of magnitudes. Metacrawler gave me one page of search results-- that was it.
One of the search engines Metacrawler uses in its searches is AltaVista, so I decided to do a search from AltaVista's web page. Just as I expected, AltaVista came back with hundreds of thousands of search results for "reprint rights" and some results looked familiar to me on the first page. Two individual search engines gave me search results numbering many thousands or a few hundred thousand (for my purposes, it's the same thing since who has time to search them all). Of the two search engines, one is used by Metacrawler; however, when Metacrawler was used it only gave me 20 search results and that was it. I have to scratch my head at this discovery.
It is true that Metacrawler has some great features and good support for multimedia searches. It is true that Metacrawler searches Yellow Pages, White Pages, and Classifieds. Metacrawler is even considerate of users of older web browsers by providing a low-bandwidth search facility. However, Metacrawler failed me in the one thing it is supposed to do well: search for something across a number of search engines.
If anyone wants to use Metacrawler for whatever reason, be sure to know what Metacrawler has to offer and how its options are used. Metacrawler has a pleasing appearance, and may items are clearly marked. However, it seems as if it will take a while to use Metacrawler properly if it is necessary to explore all its options. For this reason I cannot recommend Metacrawler, but I may find myself using it again if my situation makes sense for me to use Metacrawler again.
Recommended:
No
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About the Author
Location: New York, NY, USA
Reviews written: 117
Trusted by: 10 members
About Me: Single Native New Yorker, 34, who returned to NYC after several years in NJ.
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