Handpicked Software

Different search engines use different methodologies to prioritize results. Because of this, the current “top four” search engines (Google, Teoma, Yahoo!, and MSN) all yield different ordering (and, in most instances, content) for their top-listed results. It would frequently be very useful to be able to conduct a search on all four engines “all at once”, retrieve the results, and open them. Additionally, it would be desirable to eliminate any duplicates, and sort the remaining results according to the average of their individual search engine rankings: this is why MegaSearch was created.

This widget takes a search query, posts it to Google, Teoma, Yahoo!, and MSN, and collects the results in a NoteTaker notebook. Any duplicate results are eliminated; the remaining results are ordered as follows:

• Results that show up in more than one search engine are grouped together according to how many search engines returned the result in question;
• Within each group, results are sorted according to the average of their individual search engine rankings.

For all the search engines, only those links that correspond directly to search results are extracted (i.e., the ads, links to other parts of the search engine sites, etc., will not be included).

After this widget has finished, webpages may be loaded by hand one at a time, or all at once by running the “Load MegaSearch Pages” script within NoteTaker.

Notes:

1. A new NoteTaker notebook is created for each new search.

2. Since collecting all the results may take a while (depending upon the speed of your computer and your Internet connection), the notebook returns to the original search page at the end of the search to let you know the process is complete.

3. Ask.com (a.k.a. AskJeeves.com) is not included in the search engines, since it uses – and yields results identical to – the Teoma search engine.

4. Some duplicates may remain, due to the fact that not all search engines may refer to the same page in the same way. Thus, Google may return the URL for a given page as “http://www.mysite.com”, while Yahoo! may list it as “http://mysite.com/index.html”.

Developer’s website: AquaMinds Software