Web Matrix: "All-in-One" Tools

Popular Unified and Multiple Search Interfaces

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With the proliferation of Web search engines, a user must select one favorite or dedicate a hotlist to contain them all. To remedy this, some sites offer "all-in-one" services which provide convenient single page access to the best search engines out there. I like to divide these up into 2 categories: Unified Search Interfaces and Multiple Search Interfaces.

Unified Search Interfaces

These interfaces provide a single search form that forwards your queries to one or more search engines at the same time. Unlike multiple search forms on a page, unified services hide the complexity of different search criteria and organize the results into a single format, at the cost of slower searches with less control.

all4one

all4one Search Machine

URL for Search Page: http://all4one.com/
Home Organization: easyPAGE Internet Services

4 Services: Alta Vista, Lycos, WebCrawler, Yahoo!

If you don't mind the large graphics, wild colors, and poor orgaization -- or you use a text-only browser, you'll find this service provides convenient access to the most popular search engines.

MetaCrawler

MetaCrawler Multi-Threaded Web Search Service

URL for Search Page: http://metacrawler.cs.washington.edu:8080/
Home Organization: Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington.

8 Services: Galaxy, excite!, InfoSeek, Inktomi, Lycos, Open Text, WebCrawler, Yahoo!

MetaCrawler provides a clean and simple unified search interface to several key Internet services. With help pages, sample searches, and other support documents, the crawler is a well-rounded Internet service itself.

SavvySearch

SavvySearch

URL for Front Page: http://guaraldi.cs.colostate.edu:2000/
URL for Search Page: http://guaraldi.cs.colostate.edu:2000/form
Home Organization: Colorado State University

23 Services, including: ALIWEB, Alta Vista, DejaNews, excite!, Galaxy, InfoSeek, Inktomi, Lycos, New Rider's, Open Text, Point Search, WebCrawler, WhoWhere?, Yahoo!

SavvySearch is an excellent interface to almost every search engine on your hotlist. It provides a number of search controls and display options, help and FAQ pages, and alternate search pages in 15 languages -- what more could you want?

Multiple Search Interfaces

The other kind of all-in-one services are those that simply list numerous popular search engines on a single page, which lets you send your query to successive databases from a single bookmark. These tools simplify tracking the URLs for various search engines, like one stop Internet shopping.

The list of multiple interfaces is too large and dynamic to maintain a serious list of them. If you are not satisfied with the unified interfaces listed above, go to Yahoo!'s all-in-one index page. That's always a good place to find current ones.

This collection is Copyright © 1995-6 by Matt Slot, but has been designed for public use. Permission is hereby granted for unlimited print and electronic redistribution. Your feedback is appreciated.

Matt Slot * fprefect@ambrosiasw.com * 12/4/96