1. Internet Resources Discovery (IRD) Meta-Search Engines (MSEs)

2. 2 T.Sharon-A.Frank Contents Meta Search Engine (MSE) Why use several SEs? Highlighted MSEs Hebrew MSEs MSE comparison When to use MSE – pros and cons How to choose MSE?

3. 3 T.Sharon-A.Frank Search Engines Generations 1st Generation - Basic SEs: 2nd Generation - Meta SEs: 3rd Generation - Popularity SEs:

4. 4 T.Sharon-A.Frank 2nd Generation SEs - MetaSEs Using several SEs in parallel. The results are filtered, ranked and presented to the user as a uniformed list. The ranking is a combination of the number of sources each page appeared in, and the ranking in each source.

5. 5 T.Sharon-A.Frank Meta SE is a Meta-Service It doesn’t use an Index/database of its own. It uses other external search services that provide the information necessary to fulfill user queries.

6. 6 T.Sharon-A.Frank Meta Search Engine MetaCrawler YahooWeb CrawlerOpen TextLycosInfoSeekInktomiGalaxyExcite Google · Yahoo · Jeeves Ask About · LookSmart · Overture FindWhat

7. 7 T.Sharon-A.Frank Premises of a Meta SE No single search is sufficient. Problem in expressing the query. Low quality references can be detected.

8. 8 T.Sharon-A.Frank Why use Several SEs? Search Engines differ more than we think!

9. 9 T.Sharon-A.Frank Overlap between Google and Yahoo Source: Jux2 analysis of 500 top search terms, April 2004 http://www.jux2.com/stats.php

10. 10 T.Sharon-A.Frank Who Overlaps Whom?

11. 11 T.Sharon-A.Frank Try it yourself @ jux2

12. 12 T.Sharon-A.Frank MSE - Motivation 1.The number and variety of SEs. 2.Each SE provides an incomplete snapshot of Web. 3.Users are forced to try and retry their queries across different SEs. 4.Each SE has its own interface. 5.Irrelevant, outdated or unavailable responses. 6.Each query is independent. 7.No individual customization. 8.The result is not homogenized.

13. 13 T.Sharon-A.Frank Problems of MSEs No advanced search options. Using the lowest common denominator. Sponsored results from the SEs are not highlighted.

14. 14 T.Sharon-A.Frank Highlighted MSEs

15. 15 T.Sharon-A.Frank Mamma

16. 16 T.Sharon-A.Frank Dogpile

17. 17 T.Sharon-A.Frank Dogpile Advanced (1)

18. 18 T.Sharon-A.Frank Dogpile Advanced (2)

19. 19 T.Sharon-A.Frank Dogpile Advanced (3)

20. 20 T.Sharon-A.Frank Dogpile Advanced (4)

21. 21 T.Sharon-A.Frank Dogpile Preferences (1)

22. 22 T.Sharon-A.Frank Dogpile Preferences (2)

23. 23 T.Sharon-A.Frank Vivisimo Vivísimo supports the most advanced features of the major search engines. Need to just use Vivísimo syntax, which follows the most standard conventions. Vivísimo translates your query into the corresponding syntax of each underlying search engine. Also, Vivísimo only queries the search engines that support your chosen syntax.

24. 24 T.Sharon-A.Frank Vivisimo Advanced (1)

25. 25 T.Sharon-A.Frank Vivisimo Advanced (2)

26. 26 T.Sharon-A.Frank Clusty

27. 27 T.Sharon-A.Frank Ixquick (1)

28. 28 T.Sharon-A.Frank Ixquick (2)

29. 29 T.Sharon-A.Frank Ixquick (3)

30. 30 T.Sharon-A.Frank KartOO – Visual MSE

31. 31 T.Sharon-A.Frank MetaSEs in Hebrew

32. 32 T.Sharon-A.Frank When to use a MSE? When single Basic-SE fails to provide good results. One-stop shopping - prefer to search multiple SEs/sites at once to get blended ranked results (so as to save effort/time). Searching for multi-faceted topics. Want to get clustered results to focus search on the relevant keywords. Looking for current events/news.

33. 33 T.Sharon-A.Frank MSE pros Useful when you want to retrieve a relatively small number of relevant results. An excellent choice for obscure topics. A good option when you are not having luck finding what you want when you search. Appropriate when you want to get an overall picture of what is available on the Web on your topic.

34. 34 T.Sharon-A.Frank MSE cons Use is limited primarily to simple queries. Little or no field searching is available. Most services return a limited number of results that do not represent the total results from any source engine. Sponsored results are not highlighted (even though probably not first).

35. 35 T.Sharon-A.Frank How to Choose your MetaSE Search engines used Operators supported Special features Speed Presentation

36. 36 T.Sharon-A.Frank Meta-SEs Features Chart Red – not working

37. 37 T.Sharon-A.Frank Practical Recommendations  Use Ixquick for fast results and maximal syntax flexibility.  Use Vivisimo/Clusty (as a start) for Clustering and/or Hebrew.  Use Dogpile to include Google, date range, or spelling corrections.  Use none for non-MSE tasks (see MSE cons)…

38. 38 T.Sharon-A.Frank Bibliography http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/etzioni/papers/m etacrawler.pdfhttp://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/etzioni/papers/m etacrawler.pdf http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/etzioni/papers/ie ee-metacrawler.pdfhttp://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/etzioni/papers/ie ee-metacrawler.pdf http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156241 http://vivisimo.com/advanced?form=Advanced http://vivisimo.com/help.html http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/22 26841http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/22 26841