Hello fsu,
Great topical question!
Q. What's the maximum amount of time that MetaCrawler ... search
engine?
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The Metacrawler engine has a user interface that will allow you to
select up to 2 full minutes (120 seconds) of 'time out value', for any
particular engine at one time. This variable can be seen in the URL in
your browser when you perform an advanced search, designated as :
timeout=120
Advanced Search Settings
http://www.metacrawler.com/customize/
The 120 is in seconds, and is how most scripting (java,perl) is
programmed with regards to time. The timeout value can be increased by
hand (changing this variable in the URL), but will often produce
unpredictable results when set above 2 minutes. This may be an effect
of how they have set up their script, meaning they could have a
routine that detects any input greater than 120 seconds, and
automatically adjusts it to this level. Also note that most of the
connections are directly to other servers actual HTML search results.
This means Metacrawler connects much like a browser to some of the
sites it gives results from. If the MetaCrawler site can not connect
to the resource site in a preset time frame, the site send back no
data and timeout on it's own.
This 2 minutes is the maximum connection for all engines together if
you select more than one engine. Here is a search using only About.com
as the resource, with a 120 second timeout value:
MetaCrawler results for 'art', using one engine
http://search.metacrawler.com/texis/search?q=art&timeout=120&eng=About
Q. What kind of search engine is Kanoodle ... search engine like
Google?
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Kanoodle is a Pay Per Listing, or Pay Per Click search directory. This
site allows advertisers to buy keywords in an attempt to outbid each
other, and receive higher listings for those keywords. Sites like
Kanoodle do not attempt to index (make copies of) websites, store them
in a database, and uses programs to search the contents of the stored
data. This is the major difference with concern to search engines like
Google.
PPC search engines defined and listed
"Pay per click search engines, pay for placement or pay for ranking
search engines are a highly effective way to attract cheap, targeted
traffic to your website..."
http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com/
Google software scans websites, indexes words, phrases, and even
complete webpages. This data is then stored somewhat categorically.
How categorically is a big Google secret that even us researchers are
not privy too :-)
So in a nutshell :
- Search Engines index websites and data - *usually* free of charge.
- Pay Per Click engines store keywords and descriptions that people
pay for.
- I use a search engine for research, study, shopping and more.
- I use a P.P.C. engine to find results when shopping for products or
services.
Q. What is the ... View Results by Site vs. View Results by Source?
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When viewing search results on a metasearch engine, this is almost a
staple option. Viewing by source would mean you want to view all the
sites that the metaengine found for your search term, listed in order,
under each respective engine they were found at. An example of my
search results for 'art', ordered by source:
Viewing by source (Notice all results listed under the site found at)
http://search.metacrawler.com/texis/search?q=art&brand=metacrawler&collate=0
Metacrawler doesn't seem to have an option to view the results by site
anymore. When this function is available, it means you can cluster the
results of your search into site results. Example : If 15 of the
results were from www.thisfakeurl.com, then the results from that site
would be shown together, normally is some fashion of relevance.
Here is a Google cached page that verifies the above, although
HotBot.com no longer utilizes this feature either:
http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:7OJM0TGEMy4C:www.clubi.ie/webserch/engines/hotbot/display.htm+%22View+Results+by+site%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
To help assist with this answer, I searched Google for:
"View results by site"
://www.google.com/search?q=%22View+Results+by+site%22
I also made great use of the Metacrawler engine:
http://www.metacrawler.com
I hope this answers all of your questions to your satisfaction! Please
do not hesitate to ask for clarification before rating this answer. I
would love to offer further assistance.
Thanks,
SgtCory |
