From Wendy Boswell,
Your Guide to Web Search.
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I had the chance to ask the folks at Info.com some questions about their metasearch search tool, the future of metasearching, and more. Here's the interview.

What is Info.com?

The debate regarding broad search engines (e.g. Google) and vertical search engines (e.g. Shopping.com), is typically argued around convenience rather than the relevancy that vertical search engines provide.

Info.com satisfies this ‘‘trade off’’ by being a simple to use search platform that provides consistent functionality, look and feel for accessing results from both search engines and vertical search engines. In essence, Info.com is seeking to attract and retain users through the development of a simple and time saving interface, combining all of the appealing aspects of various search offerings into one.

If I type in a query to Info.com, I get a different looking answer page than I'm used to. Could you explain how Info delivers results to users?

The left hand side of the info.com results page displays only the search engine’s free results (non-sponsored) of which include results from Google, Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves. The right hand side of the page displays the sponsored listings.

For the one in five searches made to find commercial information, users often find paid listings more useful than free results. By aggregating all the major paid listings from all the pay-per-click directories (PPC), Info.com offers more paid listings (approximately 450,000) than any other single source search destination site.

If a user prefers to view sponsored and non sponsored results blended together and with the option to view search engines individually then users can click onto a link above the Info.com web results page called ‘view results differently’. See this Results page example.

What does a metasearch engine such as Info.com have as an advantage over other search engines?

• Saves time:Because Info.com aggregates the major engines in one set of search results, it negates the need for users to search multiple engines.
• More up-to-date results: Each search engine uses web crawlers (known as ‘spiders’) to read pages of the World Wide Web, usually about once a week. These Web crawlers allow the search engines to store and index information about each page they select in a proprietary database. By drawing on all the major search engine databases, Info.com’s results are, on average, more up-to-date than any one single search engine.
• Access to more of the World Wide Web: Web crawlers index only a portion of the total Web pages available. Therefore, the size and nature of the search engine’s database defines its limitations. This is important since it has a bearing on the comprehensiveness and relevancy of results. By aggregating the results of the main search engines, Info.com’s results cover a larger proportion than any one of them.
• The Top Average Results: A vast majority of the search results on Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search and Ask Jeeves are different. The University of Pittsburgh and The Pennsylvania State University in July 2005, released results of a study which shows that only 1.1% of results on the first page from those four leading engines are the same. Info.com displays only the most relevant results from each of the major search engines. Info.com’s meta search results are the top results from the different engines, which are de-duped and, then by an algorithm, are ranked in order of the average top listing by weighting them together. This approach underpins a distinct and highly relevant search offering.
• Whatever.you.want.info.com: Info.com’s search toolbar lets users enter “whatever.you.want.info.com” (e.g., miami.hotels.info.com) in any URL bar and be immediately directed to their Info.com search results. This eliminates the chore of going to irrelevant sites or downloading third-party toolbars.

What providers generate your search results?

We provide you with results from up to 14 search engines and pay-per-click directories, including Google, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, Kanoodle, LookSmart, About, Overture and Open Directory.

• Shopping - Shopping.com
• News -Topix.net
• Hotels and Flights - Kayak.com
• Jobs - Indeed.com
• Tickets - Fatlens.com

This Q and A with metasearch engine Info.com is continued on page two.