Parallel Search Engines

In the previous activities, you explored a number of search engines and web indexes. The next category of search tool offers a way to search multiple search engines and web indexes at the same time. The Parallel or Meta Search Engines submit your query to multiple search tools and then combine the results returned by all of these search tools into one unified list.

We will focus our exploration on Yippy (formerly called Clusty and Vivisimo), one of the top metasearch engines. Yippy can query multiple search engines simultaneously. Yippy also offers a sophisticated document clustering feature that analyzes the results on the fly and extracts keywords and phrases. These clustered results are presented on the left side of the results screen.

Click here to open Yippy in a new browser window.

Enter keywords and phrases for your topic into the search box and explore the results. Click on the clouds, sources, sites and time tabs and see how each allows even further filtering of the results. Clicking the + button will expand the results in each cluster.

Record your comments on this search site in your logbook.

Add relevant resources that you found using this search site to your Bookmarks/Favorites collection.

Next: Other Parallel Search Engines