Carroll Community College

Meta-search tools are Internet resources which either provide a gateway to a number of different search engines, allow you to search across several different search engines, or analyze and combine the results from different search engines. With the large number of search tools currently available, it is sometimes helpful to use a meta-search site to retrieve the most amount of information or to locate difficult to find information. Some disadvantages of meta-search sites are that they may be slow at times and that they may retrieve irrelevant documents (i.e. Internet sites).

Some of the more useful meta-search tools:

Dogpile

Searches a variety of Internet search tools. Results can be viewed in two ways: combined into one list ranked by relevancy or separated by individual search engine. Also presents concept clusters for viewing results organized by subject/topic.

Clusty

A special feature of this meta search tool is the "clustering engine," which organizes results from several search engines into meaningful groups displayed in the left frame.

ixquick

Results are displayed in a comprehensive list and are ranked based on the number of "top 10" rankings a site receives from the various search engines. Also includes links to individual search engine results.

Mamma

Results are ranked by relevancy. Options for refining your search are offered based on how other users have searched for similar topics.

Fazzle

Searches multiple search engines and condenses results into a "Web's Best" list based on relevancy. Allows you to preview each item in the results list without exiting the results screen.