Dogpile Metasearch Engine: A Closer Look

As you can see, this only gets better and better! Again, this is a run through of the resources out there and it gives you a breakdown of what you can expect out of each of these search engines. Found your favorite one yet? Let's keep looking! If you haven't found one yet, this one right here will probably be a contender because it is one of the most popular and effective ones. Let's see what you think!

Dogpile was launched in 1996 and it is currently operated by InfoSpace, which recently revamped its interface and gave it an entire new look and features. That's always a great!

Dogpile uses innovative metasearch technology and searches the Internet's top search engines. With a single click, it claims to fetch, the best results from its combined pool of search engine sources. It displays result links on the right-hand side of the results page for clustering and refining searches even further.  This allows the searcher to go narrower subtopics without having to use advanced search tools.

SEARCHES IN:

• Google    (search engine)
• Yahoo! Search    (directory / search engine)
• Ask.com    (search engine)
• MSN Search    (search engine)
• MIVA     (e-commerce directory)
• LookSmart     (directory)

DEFAULTS TO:
AND

SEARCH OPTIONS:

Basic Search Page

• Supports only those features already supported by the engines used in the search
• Displays separate search links for "Images," "Audio," "Video," "News," "White Pages," and "Yellow Pages"

Advanced Search Page

• Supports Boolean-type searches for "all of these words," "the exact phrase," any of these words," or "none of these words" 
• Supports searching by language
• Supports searching by date, to find sites updated after a certain date, before a certain date, and between two dates
• Supports searching by domain, to include or exclude results from different domains, e.g., "com" or "edu"
• Provides adult filter, to include or exclude explicit content from searches

OTHER SEARCH OPTIONS AND FEATURES:

• Labels individual sponsored results, generally listing them first -- so, be sure to SCROLL DOWN!
• Displays a search refining box on right-hand side of results page ("Are you looking for?") to help cluster and refine searches even further. Another box shows recently completed searches.