Search Engine – Metasearch Engine Comparison

By Ali Can Akdemir

Search Engine

A software program that searches a database and gathers and reports information that contains or is related to the pre-specified terms.

Most widely known: Google, Yahoo, Lycos

Search Engine

Many of the major search engines are created through an automated process in which a program called a spider "crawls" across the Web to gather information about existing sites.

The spider captures this basic information and organizes its findings into categories, which are then used to generate search results for users.

Small businesses hoping to list an existing Web site with a major search engine may find that the process has already been completed for them by an automated spider.

Metasearch Engine

A search engine that sends user requests to several other search engines and/or databases and returns the results from each one.

Meta search enables users to enter search criteria once and access several search engines simultaneously.

Why Metasearch Engine?

Since it is hard to catalogue the entire web, the idea is that by searching multiple search engines you are able to search more of the web in less time and do it with only one click.

Even the most basic metasearch engine will allow more of the web to be searched at once than any one stand-alone search engine.

The Analysis

Target Result: A pre-defined web page or document that our query should satisfy

Scope: Range of the search engine, given a specific query. In other words, how many results are found with the given query

Page: On which page the target result is found Order: The ranking of the target result. What is the

position of the target result among other relevant – irrelevant search results

The Analysis

We have several target results, and several queries to reach each specific result

In each query, the objective is to reach the target result as easily as possible; meaning the page number and the order should be lowest

The Analysis

We have several target results, as an example; "Loss of Customer Goodwill in Lot-sizing" article by Dr. Deniz Aksen

There are several queries that are relevant with the target result, as an example; "loss of customer goodwill" + lot-sizing , "cost of customer goodwill loss" + lot-sizing

Etc..

The Analysis - Assumptions

Assumption 1: If the target result is not found within the first five pages of the query result, we assume that it is not available

Assumption 2: In case of Lycos.com , the scope of the query is not easy to retrieve. Thus, if the result has more than 100 relevant output, it is left as >100

Excel Output

Excel output