Best MetaSearch Engine?

Which is in your opinion.

[predo]

Which is in your opinion the best metasearch engine and why?

[rcjordan]

metaeureka.com

indexes sites I don't normally find in the course of regular searching

[Mike_Mackin]

[zworks.com...]

Although it has not been picking up the google results for the past week. :(

[Brett_Tabke]

It used to be the classic MetaCrawler. It was Fast and reliable.

Now they are pulling from PPC engines - results are nothing more than paid advertisments. It is now off my list and I am looking for a new one.

[rcjordan]

(Darn! Beat me to my topic-du-jour.)

Don't you think the infusion of GoTo into all the metaengines is going to ruin them across the board? I get traffic from Metacrawler and Dogpile in particular.

[Mike_Mackin]

me too

[Drastic]

I like ixquick.com the best. Easy engine selection and grouped results. It also shows what rank the term has on each engine. No love for google, though.

[rcjordan]

what I like best about ixquick was the advanced search worked like AV. still, I found that I had to keep going to metaeureka for deeper digs on the topic.

[sean orourke]

Hello WmW aficionados,

I've been splitting my time between Ixquick and Zworks, so I decided to break it down in detail to see if one was better for eyeballing the landscape. Here are my notes (1st installation in payment of eternal gratitude to Brett for all his shared wisdom).

Ixquick vs. Zworks

These individual engines appear the same in meta search engines (AFAIK) - AltaVista, AOL, Infoseek, MSN, Webcrawler

These are in Ixquick only - HotBot, NBCi, Goto (directly)

These are in Zworks only - ODP, Northern Light

These are where it gets interesting:

Yahoo - Zworks appears fine, but Ixquick is variable. Sometimes all 10 listings are fine, sometimes only half the listings are displayed, and sometimes??? (must get confused by different category/site possibilities)

Excite - typically, only shows only result #1 in Ixquick, none in Zworks

Lycos - Not in Ixquick. Minor glitch in Zworks. If shown individually, the #4 listing combines the 2nd Goto listing title with the URL of the 4th web site result (found this when a well-known SEO company showed up over a free host URL!). The rest of the listings are usually O.K.

HotBot - Ixquick is fine. Zworks doesn't have it now, but when the did get results they were not from the default listings. They were from the listings that appear when you search 25+ results on a page, which are different than the results for the default 10.

Google - both sites are lacking Google. Every once in awhile it appears in Zworks, but not often enough.

My choice? I'm tending towards Zworks because of the ODP listings & more stable Yahoo results.

Sean

[rcjordan]

Hey Sean, great first post! Welcome.

Nice breakdown, a little more sophisticated than our I-think, you-think posts, eh guys?

In terms of referrals generated, Dogpile seems to be way out in front. Anyone have any thoughts as to how they got there? Just longevity? Brand?

[Mike_Mackin]

BIG BUCKS AND REACH

InfoSpace Reports Record Third Quarter Results

Pro Forma Net Income of $0.03 Per Share and Revenues of $57.7 Million. Significantly Exceeded Expectations

[DaveAtIFG]

RCJ - Dogpile = Clever branding and word of mouth. "Dogpile" is not only easy to remember but it's a clever, not quite politically correct, name, it's "cute," so it's sticks in people's mind. I always struggle to spell "eureka" for example. And I first heard of Dogpile from a friend emailing a "try this" link.

[rcjordan]

>not quite politically correct...sticks

My thought exactly, part of the success of 'Google' too.

>I always struggle to spell "eureka" for example.

Whenever I type that one, I always think WHAT were they thinking when they named this??!!!