| Question - When should I use a
meta-search engine? |
| |
| Answer - Whether you are a photographer wanting
to keep up with the latest trend in digital cameras. Or a college
student in need of research information about molecules. Or maybe
a mother looking for cake recipes to prepare for her child's birthday
party. Meta-search engines can fulfill your desire for information
in any kind of situation
For those of you who are extremely loyal to traditional search
engines and can not imagine switching to meta-search engines. You
should still considering using meta-search engines as an alternate
source for information for the following reasons:
- Use a meta-search engine when you are not having any luck pulling
up results from your favorite search engine.
- A meta-search engine can be particularly beneficial when you
are in a hurry and do not have the time to visit several search
engines to obtain results.
- At times when you are not sure of what to search for, meta-search
engines can be a useful tool for obtaining an overview of a specific
keyword and/or subject.
- Meta-search engines are highly adept at researching narrow or
obscure topics. Since results are gathered from the index of several
search engines, a meta-search engine is likely to yield more results
for an obscure topic than a single search engine. |
| |
| Question - Why is the search time
of a meta-engine usually longer than a traditional search engine? |
| |
| Answer - It requires more time mainly because a
meta-search engine must wait for results to arrive from all the queried
sources before they can be processed and ranked. Whereas, results
of a traditional search engine are stored in databases of their servers
and page rank is often pre-determined, making retrieval time much
quicker. Therefore, it can be said that meta-search engines are only
as fast as the search engines and/or directory they search. |
| |
| Question - How do search engines
work? |
| |
Answer - Search engines help people find relevant
information on the Internet. Major search engines have huge databases
of websites that surfers can search by typing in some text.
Search engines send out spiders or robots, which follow links from
websites and index all pages they come across. Each search engine
has its own formula for indexing pages; some index the whole site,
while others index only the main page. Search engines decide the amount
of weight that will be placed on various factors that influence results.
Some want link popularity to be the most important criterion, while
others prefer meta tags. Search engines use a combination of factors
to devise their formulas. |
| |
| Question - Why is the search time
of a meta-engine usually longer than a traditional search engine? |
| |
Answer - It requires more time mainly because
a meta-search engine must wait for results to arrive from all the
queried sources before they can be processed and ranked. Whereas,
results of a traditional search engine are stored in databases of
their servers and page rank is often pre-determined, making retrieval
time much quicker. Therefore, it can be said that meta-search engines
are only as fast as the search engines and/or directory they search. |
More Search Engine FAQ - Page
1 - Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4 |
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