Internet Search: Meta Search
Updated 5/2/97 Meta Search sites offer one-stop searching off all the top search engines. Many provide advanced features such as removing duplicate hits and relevance ranking. To qualify as a meta search, the site must pull all the results together into a single page.

All4One
Calls 4 search engines: AltaVista, Lycos, WebCrawler, and Yahoo! All4One provides easy searching with dependable results.

Inference Find
This new meta-searcher uses WebCrawler, Yahoo, Lycos, Alta Vista, InfoSeek, and Excite. It is fast, and uses advanced techniques such as parallel polling and clustering results.

Highway 61
Searches 7 engines, including Excite, HotBot, Infoseek, and Lycos. Offers reliable returns and useful features for setting a query time limit.

Inso
Uses 8 search engines including AltaVista, Magellan, Open Text, and WebCrawler, but you can use only one at a time. Not a pure metasearch site, Inso aids those who aren't familiar with how to construct advanced search queries.

Mamma
The self-proclaimed "mother of all search engines" searches Alta Vista, Deja News, Excite, Infoseek, WebCrawler, Magellan, Yahoo, and Open Text. And she's really fast.

Metacrawler
Searches 9 indexes including Excite, Lycos, Open Text, and WebCrawler. This is the most accomplished of the metasearch sites we reviewed.

NetStop
This site has a Java-based interface, which is interesting but a bit complicated to use. You enter a keyword, then choose either a category of sites or a specific site to search. Actual searching is done by the Inference Find meta search engine.

ProFusion
Searches 6 indexes including AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, and Open Text. You can choose any you like, or have the site pick the best 3 for you based on its past history with your query. This is a straightforward site that performs reliably.

Savvy Search
Searches 28 engines, divided into 8 categories: Web indexes and directories, Usenet, people finders, software, reference, entertainment, and technical reports. The unique selection of various resources can prove valuable in directing your search, but trying to search everything greatly delays the process.

SuperSeek
Calls itself "the Internet's card catalog. Searches 10 engines, grouped into 3 categories: Web search engines, Usenet, and Information Super Library FAQ and Bookstore. Because of some its more specialized resources, it's better for research purposes than for general Web searching.