Using Meta Search[Research Topics]

Using Meta Search

On Your Own: what are you looking for?

Did any of the types of information or Web sites in the lesson match your own information needs and interests?
Did a need for information on a particular topic of interest to you lead you to take this course in searching on the Internet?
Take a minute or two to consider the topics of information you would like to find for yourself on the Internet.

If you are new to searching on the Internet and do not yet know where or how to find the information you want, write a list of what you would look for today if you knew how and where. The items on your list will give you opportunities to practice the search techniques and explore the search engines and directories that you will learn about.
If you have experience in searching for information on the Web, write down, or just reflect upon, what types of business-related information (industry salaries, for instance, alternative suppliers, or perhaps a professional or trade organization in your field) or personal-interest information has been most difficult to find.

After you complete an exercise that takes you to a new search engine or directory service, or one that demonstrates a new searching technique, try searching for a topic from your list.
If you are keeping a list, glance at it as you complete a module and add any new categories of information that you have discovered through the exercises and that interest you.

Metasearch Engine

A metasearch engine is a search tool that uses the data of another search engine to produce their own results from the Internet. Metasearch engines take input from a user and simultaneously send out queries to third party search engines for results. Sufficient data is gathered, formatted by their ranks and then presented to the users.
Information stored on the World Wide Web is constantly expanding, making it increasingly impossible for a single search engine to index the entire web for resources. A metasearch engine is a solution to overcome this limitation.
The technique used is to combine multiple results from different search engines. Hence, a metasearch engine is able to enhance the experience of a user for information retrieval, as less effort is required in order to access more materials. A metasearch engine is efficient, as it is capable of generating a large volume of data, however, scores of websites stored on search engines are all different: this can draw in irrelevant documents. Other problems such as spamming also significantly reduce the accuracy of the search. This synthesizing process attempts to tackle this issue and improve the engineering of a metasearch engine. There are many types of metasearch engines available to allow users to access specialized information in a particular field.