Multitasking Information Demon
Written: Oct 18 '00
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| Full Review |
While the web might appear to be a quagmire of contradictory information, there are several slabs of solid ground for users to walk on; developed as a powerful parallel search engine, Metacrawler quickly rearranges chaos into order.
Unlike traditional search engines, such as Yahoo or AOL's Search, parallel search engines do not actually search for anything. Instead they act like a personal secretary, requesting other search engines to do the work; Metacrawler then displays the results in an easy to use, and very customizable format. In other words, using Metacrawler is identical to running the same search on different search engines at the same time.
For example, if a user was to search for the word "Printers," Metacrawler would tell six different search engines to search for that term. Metacrawler quickly takes the results and arranges them by the order of relevance. This can save users much time as they are getting the benefit of using their favorite search engine as well as search engines that hardly, if ever, use.
Metacrawler offers a variety of helpful methods to look for information. First, there is the ability to use the standard options of search for: any, all, or phrase. Nice options, but by now, every search engine has them. After a search has run, users get the option to find more results that are similar to a single result.
Using the example above, let's say that in the forty plus results for printers that came back, one was listed that mentioned Canon printers. Our user decides he likes Canon, so all he has to do is click the "find more like this" link next to this result to run a new search based on the terms in this result. This is a very nice feature that can result in forgetting what exactly you were trying to look for in the first place... I guess that's what the back button is for.
Ever want to look for a product, or an item you were unsure of how to phrase? Metacrawler actually offers suggestions for each search term. When a suggestion is clicked, that word or phrase is searched for in the hopes that it turns out to be a little more search engine friendly than the first search.
A serious problem that has afflicted search engines is the embedding of paid results into result lists. These results are nothing more advertisements that link to a product or service's web page. While sometimes the information can be useful, often it is a waste of time and something to be avoided. Metacrawler does accept paid results, however, these results are clearly labled as a "Go Network paid result." Users can then decide whether they want to bite to hook or not.
Metacrawler is very quick and very reliable - a comfort in this sea of disappearing islands and turbulent waters. I have been using Metacrawler for several years and I cannot remember anytime that the connection timed out or I had to wait over a minute for a result - which is very good, considering Metacrawler has to delegate the search, wait for results, and then compile the results. For awhile, I had Metacrawler as my start page in my browser, but I changed that to a blank page because that is faster to get started with.
For power user looking to speed up their online surfing, I suggest using the low bandwidth version of Metacrawler. It has all the features of the "regular" Metacrawler but without all the graphics so that it loads much quicker.
Metacrawler also has a lot of content for users who just want to click through menus instead of actually looking for anything. There are a variety of channels that allow users to shop for anything from CDs to cars. Since I have not used these channels, I cannot honestly write anything more about them. One very interesting feature is MetaSpy, which is a list of everything people have searched or are searching for. Privacy advocates, such as myself, stand down, because there are no names or locations associated with the search terms. If you have wondered what other people look for on the Net, then this is the place to check out.
The only drawback to Metacrawler is that some of the search engines it queries time out rather than send in results. This is not due to Metacrawler, but to congestion on the search engine's server. This can be reduced by customizing Metacrawler to use longer time outs - a compromise between speed and thoroughness. Infinitely customizable, Metacrawler allows users to set the number of results per page and the number of pages to display, the number of results from each search engine, the time out settings, and much more. However, this all requires you to accept and keep a cookie on your computer and if you're not on your computer then you need to customize Metacrawler for that computer as well. Users can also use the Power Search to customize an individual search without the use of a cookie, but that tends to be very repetitive after several searches.
If you want fast, comprehensive and reliable searches then Metacraler is definitely for you. However, if you're getting paid by the hour, and are looking things up at work, perhaps you may want to use one of the slower search engines ;->
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
anecdoter
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Member: Steve
Location: Toledo, OH
Reviews written: 40
Trusted by: 3 members
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