MetaFind Screenshots

In this image. MetaFind has just finished a Simple Search for “the meaning of life.” The result limit for each Search Provider was set to 150, and yet over 1100 blended results were returned. The gap between those two numbers is due to the number of different results returned by individual Search Providers. If you’re only using a single Search Provider, how much are you missing?

MetaFind supports both Simple and Advanced searches. It knows which Search Providers support each of its twelve available Advanced parameters, and how to translate and format your Advanced Searches for each of them. In the image below, you can also see that the Search Groups list is missing - you can choose at any time whether to view that Full List of groups, or instead, the QuickList, which contains only your favorite Search Groups.

If the descriptions that typically accompany search engine results are a bit too brief, you can always use the Fetch Text command to improve them. Simply select the results you want to know more about, then tell MetaFind to visit those web sites and bring back more text - up to a limit set by you - to enhance the existing descriptions. Search results can also be opened in your favorite browser, saved and re-loaded, added to the ScrapBook, printed, exported, emailed, and even tested for safety with McAfee SiteAdvisor, Norton Safe Web, or Web Of Trust.

An enhanced description - the text after the {FT} marker was retrieved by the Fetch Text command:

The first two images demonstrated the Blended MetaSearch. This is the traditional form of MetaSearch, in which your query is sent to multiple general-purpose Search Providers, and the extracted results blended, ranked, and formatted for display. However, as ever-growing numbers of web sites add search engines of their own, MetaFind has created a new kind of search designed to take your query directly to the web sites themselves.

Nobody knows the contents of a web site better than its own search engine. In fact, those contents are often in databases that general-purpose Search Providers can’t even index. From its database of over 5000 searchable web sites, MetaFind offers over 400 specialized Web Search Groups spanning 24 Categories. Simply select an appropriate Search Group, enter your query, and let MetaFind search the web sites for you. The search result web page from each member of the group is displayed on its own tab - just click the tab to see what that web site has found for you.

Because Group Web Search is restricted to simple text searches, MetaFind also includes a third way to search - the Custom Form Search. Because individual web sites generally have their own unique needs in building Advanced queries, a single interface to search them simply isn’t possible. Custom Form Searches are a new way to overcome this limitation. There are currently six, for finding Books, CDs, DVDs, Gas Prices, Jobs, and People. Shown below is the result of a Custom Form Search for a CD.

The latest addition to MetaFind is the Hybrid Search.  This is a two-phase search which combines both Blended MetaSearch and Group Web Search.  In the first phase, a Blended MetaSearch is run.  The results of this search are not displayed, but are instead scanned for results from web sites contained in a selected Web Search Group.  If any are found, those web sites are then searched in the second phase, and their results are displayed.

The idea behind this approach is explained in greater detail in The Future of Search.  The Blended MetaSearch results are used as a “Directory” to locate web sites likely to be good places to find the search target, and then those web sites are searched directly.  This is similar to the process many of us use today - first ask a general-purpose search engine where to search, then go to those web sites and run the search again for each web site that appears in the results.  The Hybrid Search automates that process, performing both the original search and all of the subsequent repetitive searching for you.

In the image below, all twenty MetaSearch Providers were asked for their top fifty search results for the search target.  Those results were then scanned, and nine of them came from web sites that were among the sixty-three members of the selected Web Group.  The search was then sent to those nine web sites, eight of which had what we were looking for.  To accomplish this, we entered a search target, selected two search groups (one Meta, one Web) and clicked Find.  How does that compare to the way you search today?

MetaFind can be used in two ways. We’ve been looking at its “Standard” mode, in which everything happens in the same typical Windows form. However, you also have the option of using it in a “Floating Toolbar” mode. This compact form is designed to sit on top of your favorite browser, and sends its search results to that browser. Toolbar Mode has the same abilities as Standard Mode, and is just as easy to use - just enter the search target, and click the Find button.

Toolbar Mode supports the five leading Web Browsers - Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, Opera, Flock, and Google Chrome, and you can even add your own. The image below shows our “meaning of life” search sent to Google Chrome. You may notice an additional “Test link with” line in the results. This feature is available in both modes, and allows you to verify the safety of a web site with McAfee SiteAdvisor, Norton Safe Web, or Web Of Trust before visiting them.

Toolbar - Google Chrome Meta-Search Results

Like the Blended MetaSearch shown above, Group Web Searches can also send their results to your favorite browser. In the image below, we’ve used the twelve-member “Buy DVD Players” group to search, and the results were sent to twelve separate Opera tabs.

Toolbar - Opera Web Group Search Results

Although we’ve already created hundreds of Search Groups for you, you can also create and edit your own. Whenever Search Groups are displayed, the Group Editor is never more than a mouse-click away.

Whether your search results are displayed in MetaFind or sent to a browser, you have complete control over their appearance. In this image, MetaFnd has just been customized - a saved Theme named "Peachy" has been loaded and applied.

If you’d like to see more of MetaFind in action, you can download the MetaFind User Guide, or read the MetaFind User Guide online.  In addition to what we’ve already seen, it covers:

•  Finding text within search results
•  Saving and re-using searches
•  Printing and exporting search results
•  Emailing result links
•  Using the Paster to enter text into web pages
•  The QuickFind button
•  The QuickList Manager
•  The MetaFind ScrapBook
•  Search-o-Matic!

And advanced topics, such as
•  SiteRanker
•  Scripting