1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

Online research and reporting 77
Results from search engines can vary markedly. Figures from
the University of California at Berkeley’s library site 3 indicate that
submitting very comparable searches to different search engines
can produce about a 40% variation on search results, with about
60% of the results listing the same sites.
Meta search engines
Although this sounds like a further step down the dark road of
jargon, a meta search engine is in fact a simple concept. It is a
search engine that harnesses the power of other search engines.
It searches the other search engines, rather than building its own
database.
If this sounds like a reason for ignoring the individual search
engines and heading straight for the Big One, here first is a word
of caution.
According to the Berkeley Library site:
Most meta-search engines only spend a short time in each
database and often retrieve only 10% of any of the results in
any of the databases queried. This makes their searches
usually ‘quick and dirty’ but often good enough to find what
you want.
Also, how well will the different search engines understand the
terms of your single, original search request submitted to the
original meta search engine?
However, meta search engines are usually fast and if you know
the specific term or phrase you are looking for, they are a good
way of getting a quick overview of what is on offer.
Importantly, they also give you the opportunity to comb
through the contents of both search engines and subject
directories (see below) simultaneously.
Some meta-search engines are:
Dogpile (www.dogpile.com);
Inference Find (www.infind.com);
3 www.lib.berkeley.edu