Editing Metasearch engine (section)

== History ==
The first person to incorporate the idea of meta searching was [[University of Washington]] student Eric Selberg,<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Selberg |first1=Erik |last2=Etzioni |first2=Oren |chapter=Multi-Engine Search and Comparison Using the MetaCrawler |date=1995-12-11 |title=Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on World Wide Web |chapter-url=https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3592626.3592641 |series=WWW4 |location=New York, NY, USA |publisher=Association for Computing Machinery |pages=195–208 |doi=10.1145/3592626.3592641 |isbn=978-1-56592-169-6}}</ref> who published a paper about his [[MetaCrawler]] experiment in 1995. The search engine is still usable as of 2024.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Metacrawler |url=https://www.metacrawler.com/ |access-date=2024-12-05 |website=www.metacrawler.com}}</ref> 

On May 20, 1996, [[HotBot]], then owned by [[Wired (magazine)|Wired]], was a search engine with search results coming from the [[Inktomi]] and Direct Hit databases. It was known for its fast results and as a search engine with the ability to search within search results. Upon being bought by [[Lycos]] in 1998, development for the search engine staggered and its market share fell drastically. After going through a few alterations, HotBot was redesigned into a simplified search interface, with its features being incorporated into Lycos' website redesign.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.websearchworkshop.co.uk/hotbot_history.php | title=Search engine rankings on HotBot: a brief history of the HotBot search engine}}</ref>

In 1997, Daniel Dreilinger published a paper on his experimental metasearch engine, SavvySearch, which was able to automatically select the correct search engine to prioritize based on prior experience.<ref name="Howe1997">{{Cite journal |last1=Howe |first1=Adele E. |last2=Dreilinger |first2=Daniel |date=1997-06-15 |title=SavvySearch: A Metasearch Engine that Learns which Search Engines to Query |url=https://ojs.aaai.org/aimagazine/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/1290 |journal=AI Magazine |language=en |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=19 |doi=10.1609/aimag.v18i2.1290 |issn=2371-9621}}</ref>

A metasearch engine called Anvish was developed by Bo Shu and [[Subhash Kak]] in 1999; the search results were sorted using [[instantaneously trained neural networks]].<ref>{{cite journal | last1=Shu | first1=Bo | last2=Kak | first2=Subhash | author-link2=Subhash Kak | title=A neural network based intelligent metasearch engine | journal=Information Sciences | pages=1–11 | year=1999| volume=120 | issue=4 | doi=10.1016/S0020-0255(99)00062-6 | citeseerx=10.1.1.84.6837 }}</ref> This was later incorporated into another metasearch engine called Solosearch.<ref>{{cite web | last=Kak | first=Subhash | author-link=Subhash Kak | title=Better Web searches and prediction with instantaneously trained neural networks. | publisher=IEEE Intelligent Systems | date=November 1999 | url=http://www.ece.lsu.edu/kak/x5kak.lo.pdf}}</ref>

In August 2000, India got its first meta search engine when HumHaiIndia.com was launched.<ref>{{Cite web |title=New kid in town |url=https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/science-and-technology/story/20000904-new-kid-in-town-761641-2012-07-06 |access-date=2024-03-14 |website=India Today |date=6 July 2012 |language=en}}</ref> It was developed by the then 16 year old Sumeet Lamba.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2020-08-01 |title=What is Metasearch Engine? |url=https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/what-is-metasearch-engine/ |access-date=2024-03-14 |website=GeeksforGeeks |language=en-US}}</ref> The website was later rebranded as Tazaa.com.<ref>{{Cite web |title=www.metaseek.nl |url=https://www.metaseek.nl/ |access-date=2024-03-14 |website=www.metaseek.nl}}</ref>

[[Ixquick]] is a search engine known for its privacy policy statement. Developed and launched in 1998 by David Bodnick, it is owned by Surfboard Holding BV. In June 2006, Ixquick began to delete private details of its users following the same process with [[Scroogle]]. Ixquick's privacy policy includes no recording of users' IP addresses, no identifying cookies, no collection of personal data, and no sharing of personal data with third parties.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.startpage.com/en/about-us.html | title=About Us – Our History}}</ref> It also uses a unique ranking system where a result is ranked by stars. The more stars in a result, the more search engines agreed on the result.

In April 2005, [[Dogpile]], then owned and operated by [[InfoSpace]], Inc., collaborated with researchers from the [[University of Pittsburgh]] and [[Pennsylvania State University]] to measure the overlap and ranking differences of leading Web search engines in order to gauge the benefits of using a metasearch engine to search the web. Results found that from 10,316 random user-defined queries from [[Google]], [[Yahoo!]], and [[Ask Jeeves]], only 3.2% of first page search results were the same across those search engines for a given query. Another study later that year using 12,570 random user-defined queries from [[Google]], [[Yahoo!]], [[Bing (search engine)|MSN Search]], and [[Ask Jeeves]] found that only 1.1% of first page search results were the same across those search engines for a given query.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.bernardjjansen.com/uploads/2/4/1/8/24188166/jansen_overlap_intr.pdf | title=Overlap among major web search engines | first1=Amanda | last1=Spink | first2=Bernard J. | last2=Jansen | first3=Vinish | last3=Kathuria | first4=Sherry | last4=Koshman | publisher=Emerald | date=2006}}</ref>