Meta-Search Engines
There are hundreds of meta-search engines but only a few very good ones. Look for:
- clustering of results - some kind of grouping to help you get a big picture
- visualization of the clusters
- the main search engines
- well marked sponsored ads, preferably segregated on the page rather than interspersed with other results
- display that shows which search engines returned the result
- other features that provide choice or control
Those listed on this page fall into two categories: Best - they meet the criteria; and Other - satisfactory but limited.
Best Meta-Search | Others to Consider | Real Time
Best Meta-Search Engines
These are the best because they will cluster results by various means, have a good to excellent choice of engines, and have some special feature for handling or display.
Polymeta www.polymeta.com WSG Pick - Updated June 2010
Polymeta is ""a universal meta search and discovery engine" - it searches Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask by default and offers the capability to select more such as Cuil and Exalead. (Click on Select Sources.) Selections from news, images, videos will show in the right panel depending on the search.
The clustering, shown in the left panel, is fairly fined grained by word phrases or words rather than derived topics. There is also a java-created cluster graph for a visual of the groupings. T
There is also a metasearch of news, images, video, twitter, and blogs. Topic clustering will show for news and blogs.
Polymeta is available as an addon in Firefox. Search Add-Ons for Firefox.
Allplus was a sibling meta-search engine, also developed by WebLib, but will be closed soon. (Update June 23, 2010)
Carrot Clustering Engine demo.carrot2.org WSG Pick
Carrot2 organizes results into thematic categories (or topics) from a choice of clustering algorithms. It will also organize results by source engine and by site according to the domain. Web search results come from Ask, Google, Yahoo, Google, Live, Exalead and Scholar, and there are other individual search engines alone such as PubMed.
By default, Carrot2 will cluster results into topics similar to Vivisimo. When you begin the search you can choose the clustering you prefer: Lingo - the default for topic, STC - another topic view, url, or source engine. Click on More Options to make the changes.
Carrot2 offers a Visualisation wheel that shows the major groupings on a disc. Click on a segment to bring up the results in the right panel.
eTools.ch etools.ch
eTools is a Swiss metasearch engine for the European market. Searching by language (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish) and country is quite easy. eTools is the only Web metasearch tool where you can weight the importance of the source engines for the search results. (Assign weights under Preferences). Engines include Altavista, Ask, Exalead, Google, Bing, Cuil, Yahoo and others. Results are clustered by one-word topic and by source.
iSeek www.iseek.com WSG Pick
iSeek promises "targeted discovery". It analyzes the search results to identify "iViews" - these are essentially facets that identify the subject, place, person, organization, date and time, and source. The sources include Google, Ask, Yahoo, Bing and New York Times. iSeek claims to be able to pick out the meaning and concepts in a natural language query. Ask away.
It won Best Alternative Search Engine from AltSearchEngines for 2008 - and deservedly so.
iZito www.izito.co.uk
iZito is a UK metasearch engine with a good interface. Results are nicely clustered in hierarchical folders on the right. iZito searches Bing, Yahoo, Cuil, Gigablast - not Google. Sources are shown on individual results and there are several options for setting preferences, though there is no way to select engines.
Some Other MetaSearch Engines
These metasearch engines are generally satisfactory, but may have become tired, or aren't being maintained well, or are limited in features. There are a couple that must be mentioned because they are well known even though they exist mainly to deliver ads.
Clusty clusty.com
Clusty clusters results into topics, thereby making exploration of the results infinitely easier. Clusty is Vivisimo's consumer search engine which provides meta-search of selected Web search engines, news engines, and blogs; and direct search of images, encyclopedia (Wikipedia), shopping, jobs and US government. You can customize the tabs under Preferences to see the collections you want as well as control how the results are displayed - unusual in a metasearcher.
Click on 'details' to learn how the individual engines responded. Ask, Bing, and Yahoo (new) are likely listed. The one disadvantage of the web meta-search is that Clusty doesn't include Google.
Use Remix to take another slice of the search results, this time without the topics you just examined. It may surface some new groupings.
For Web searching, News, Blogs, Gov and some other options, use the Advanced Search to configure number of results and some other settings.
The main attraction is the display of results in folders. The Vivisimo technology groups the results into folders according to its analysis of the pages returned from the metasearch. Can also group results by source or sites (domain).
Fuzzfind is a bit cute but is one of very few to combine web search (Google, Yahoo, Live) with the social bookmarking tool Delicious. The numbered ranking at the search engines and number of posts at delicious give us some idea of popularity. Fuzzfind can even come up with related searches.
Info.com's web metasearch uses Google, Yahoo, Ask, bing, About.com. These are the same as at Dogpile and Metacrawler, but Info.com marks Sponsored Results more clearly by putting them all at the top of the first page. Info.com also shows related searches (are you looking for?). There are meta-search options for audio, video, pictures, health and much much more.
Ixquick www.ixquick.com or Startpage
Ixquick is one of the oldest metasearch engines. Among the search services are Ask, bing, Cuil, and Yahoo. Ixquick ranks results by awarding a star to each hit that appears in the top ten for an engine - the more stars, the higher the placement. Ixquick can also pick the search engines to use according to the syntax used - somewhat successfully. For complex search constructions be sure to read the Ixquick Power Search page.
Also has an International Telephone Directory, Comparison Shopping, and Pictures. Ixquick now has a video search powered by Blinkx and makes it easy to restrict the search to a broad category. for videos through Blinkx. Ixquick comes in several languages.
Note: Ixquick protects your privacy - it does not record your IP address at all.
Metacrawler www.metacrawler.com
Metacrawler searches the four main engines - Google, Yahoo, bing, and Ask plus About.com.
Sponsored (paid placement) listings are (faintly) marked as Found on Ads and might be easily missed since other results have Found on Google, of Found on Ask.com.
On some searches Metacrawler will suggest some other phrases. It also keeps track of recent searches. Metasearch is also available for images, video, news (Yahoo and Topix), white and yellow pages.
Metacrawler is a member of the Infospace family which also includes Dogpile, a long-time favourite, and Webcrawler. In the United Kingdom, Dogpile is known as WebFetch.com. It offers search in the UK or International.
Zuula www.zuula.com
Zuula is a metasearch engine for the Web, blogs, images, and news. For web search, it picks up Google, Yahoo, bing, Gigablast, Exalead and six others, and displays these as tabs on the results page. You can control the choices through Preferences or Edit Tabs. It does not collate results - it mainly makes it easier to run the search against your favourites of these five engines (pity that Ask is not among them). Zuula will remember your searches unless you disable this - simply click on Turn-off, or go to the page for Preferences > General.
Real Time Added Jan 2010
Leapfish.com turned to being a metasearch engine of real-time and multimedia sources. They call it the Living Web. It has two buttons:
- Search Real-time: This has results from Twitter, Flickr, and likely Facebook
- Search the Web: There are results from Google, Bing, or Yahoo - you choose. But Digg and various multimedia sources will be there too.
Meta-Search Exercise
Learn more about meta-search engines directly from the Web. Run a search at Clusty and one other meta-search engine for "meta search engines" "search tips". Especially note the Clustered Results at Clusty. Compare results and presentation at the two engines.