Analysis of Meta-Search engines using the Meta-Meta- Search tool SSIR

Abstract

Numerous information retrieval tools like Search Engines, Web Directories and deep-web search portals exist. Meta-search engines (MSE) developed over the past years claim to automatically and simultaneously search many other such information retrieval tools and improvise the fused results. This paper acquaints SSIR (http://www.ssir.in) a tier-three Meta- Search Engine or a Meta-meta search tool. Upon receiving a query, SSIR passes the modified query to various Meta-Search Engines in parallel, collects and processes the results and passes it to the user like any other Meta-Search Engine. Currently it is hosted as a live prototype and various improvements are being added. Apart from being a public software product used for internet searching, it is being used as a tool for analysis of overlaps and uniqueness among search results of various MSEs. The study also analyses the percentage of contribution in the top results of popular search engines Google, Yahoo and Windows-Live in the top results covered by individual MSEs and by SSIR.