I’m not a big fan of meta search engines, but one does standout and find its way into my regular tool-kit. One of the problems with Internet searching is building the correct string of search terms for a particular search engine.
Search Engines
I use clustering search engines and directories to help build the most specific search statement, but I’m still left with the problem of knowing if I have found the best search engine to use for that statement. The large search engines, Google, MSN (Live Search), and Yahoo offer the largest databases, but it takes more than typing in a person’s name to get relevant results. Long search statements must be structured properly for each search engine. Trying to create the best search statement for Yahoo or Live Search takes some effort starting with a hunt for the list of operators and the syntax documentation. You will notice that a comparison with Google that the search operators and syntax are somewhat different.
Operators
A meta-search that searches these three search engines gives-up some operators. Such a rudimentary meta-search site would not be of much use; unless it allowed you to compare the results from each search engine. It would also be useless if it didn’t allow the NOT, PHRASE, and MUST CONTAIN operators in a form that is recognised by all the search engines. Jux2 provides this functionality. Continue reading ‘Comparitive Searching’