Metasearch Industry - Good, Bad, and the Ugly

So you want to build a meta search engine? Let's think about that. On the outside it sounds like a great idea. "Hey, I can put all of this information into one easy search, make it pretty and people won't be able to get enough." First, how are you going to separate yourself from the 1000 other meta search projects out there? Second, if you do succeed, there may be nothing but a black hole at the end of the tunnel.

Ever notice how some of the largest, supposed best metasearch engines disappeared for no apparent reason? Anyone remember what I thought was the best metasearch around in 2000, Savvy Search? How about Scour? What about the original metasearch.com or recently named top meta search by Search Engine Watch, jux2.com? Web Crawler isn't the web crawler it used to be. If you followed the evolution of Dog Pile, you could see that it had been tugged in all different directions with it's feeds, which made you wonder if it had to do with the cost of the information. It may not be the same reason for all of them, but there is a maximum tolerance level that the majors: Yahoo, Google, and MSN, have for websites that survive off delivery of content coming from their resources. Not sure exactly the number, but at some point I'm sure they'll come knocking. Unconfirmed story is that jux 2 had reached a point in it's daily search level that it was time to pay to play the game. If they were to continue forward, it was time to pay for the feeds that were supporting the site. Not sure if that was the reason that the site was listed as a beta site and had it's former owner quoted as saying, "it was built only for research purposes". He sold the site rather than deal with the business of cutting deals with the major search providers. Got to have the geek in you to build it and make it run, got to have the savvy business head to make the deals to keep it running if it does.

So, if you win... you lose? Guess the moral of the story is you got to have the geek in you to get it built, got to have the internet search engine optimization experience to make it successful, and the savvy business mind and upper executive level negotiation skills to keep it running if it does succeed.

Is it "Metasearch" or "Meta Search"?

Have you ever found yourself wondering which is proper: "metasearch" or "meta search". After a little research, it seems that the jury is split right down the middle.

A check at Google would tell you that "metasearch" is listed 8,790,000 times.
The same search at MSN returns 666,278 results. Yahoo 3,490,000.

Google's results for "meta search" brings in 8,450,000. Add in MSN's results for this search term brings you 392,978. Yahoo 2,680,000.

So using this methodology we can deduce that metasearch is more widely used than the term "meta search" by an overall margin of 20%. Does that solve the debate? Unfortunately not. Turns out the word "metasearch" is no where to be found at dictionary.com. Also, while searching for metasearch at MSN, you will find that when typing the singular version, you will be asked, did you mean "meta search", yet the reverse result does not appear if you type meta search. Google and Yahoo's smart engine seems to accept that "metasearch" is term or word and does not ask you if you were looking for an alternate.

Where does this leave us? Well, if I were building a page that I wanted to rank in all three engines, I would be more apt to go with "meta search" even though there is more popularity to the singular form. All three engines penalize pages for misspellings. If at least one of the three is going to drop my ranking due to spelling I would be left with no choice. The sly metasearch webmaster builds alternative pages to match the two spellings, careful not to copy exact format of the two pages or he is left penalized for building mirror sites.

In the end were are left with personal preference. I guess you know what side of the fence I stand on given the blog title.

The Mergist

Welcome to Metasearch Review, the first search review site dedicated solely to the meta search community and its developers.