-Comparison of the search engines.

I am not going to pretend that this comparison is the result of highly scientific work; I have also not checked my results with the producers of the different engines, though I have tried to ensure accuracy. Due to the fast changing nature of the Internet however, you are advised to check the information for yourself, since it will doubtless become out of date quickly.I chose Meta-search engines which offered as much variety as possible, and gave me examples of list, consecutive and simultaneous searches, and obtained the data for all of them on 25th February 2003. According to Yahoo there are at present a total of over 100 different sites offering engines of this type, so for a full list I would point you to them.My conclusions, which are my own personal impressions, nothing more, are as follows.I see no value whatsoever in the list approach. These are not examples of what I would regard as 'true' multi-search engines; anyone could put a list of these together and claim that they had created a multi-search engine when in actual fact all that they have done is be slightly creative with cut and paste facilities. The possible exception is Metasearch, which does automatically put your desired search terms into the appropriate places on the cut and paste search engines they have referenced. This approach also is unable to properly provide boolean operators etc, since the page does not interact with the search engines themselves, simply providing this front end cut and paste job. Worse, they are usually unable to offer much by the way of help screens, since this is dependant on the search engines themselves.
Consecutive multi-search engines were however much better. They did make attempts to integrate their page into the search engines, and so are generally better at providing a wider range of functions, although I still found that help screens and guides to searching were very limited. The major disadvantage of this approach is that it can take considerable time for the search to be completed, and the weak link is always going to be the slowest engine that they reference. However, they do seem to work reasonably well, and are certainly worth experimenting with.
Simultaneous search engines seem to be few and far between, but they are without a doubt the most effective. Superseek uses the Frames approach to overcome the problem of obtaining and displaying results on the screen, but this approach does mean that you have to have a frames compatible browser available, which not everyone will have. The search results screen also looks as though its come straight out of an aeroplane cockpit and is a little daunting when you first view it. However, it does not take long to get used to. They do also have a non-frames approach, but I did not try this out. Worth experimenting with.
My two favourites however are the Internet Sleuth and Savvy Search. Both were helpful, fast and efficient. I would be quite happy to use either or both of these to run a multi-search, and I would recommend them.
I would welcome comments, additions, updates and so on; please feel free to email me.