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 Dogpile's homepage featuring their mascot, Arfie [1] (September 2012) | |
Type of site | Metasearch engine |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | System1 |
| Created by | Aaron Flin |
| URL | www |
| Launched | November 1996 |
| Current status | Active |
Dogpile is a metasearch engine for information on the World Wide Web that fetches results from Google, Yahoo!, Yandex, Bing, [2] [3] and other popular search engines, including those from audio and video content providers such as Yahoo!. [3]
Dogpile began operation in November 1996. [4] The site was created and developed by Aaron Flin, who was frustrated with the varying results of existing indexes and intending on making Dogpile query multiple indexes for the best search results. [5] It originally provided web searches from Yahoo! (directory), Lycos (inc. A2Z directory), Excite (inc. Excite Guide directory), WebCrawler, Infoseek, AltaVista, HotBot, WhatUseek (directory), and World Wide Web Worm. [6] [7] It naturally drew comparisons with MetaCrawler, a multi-threaded search engine that had existed before, but Dogpile was more advanced, and it could also search Usenet (from sources including DejaNews) and FTP (via Filez and other indexes). [6]
In August 1999, Dogpile was acquired by Go2net, [8] who were already operating MetaCrawler. [9] Go2net was then acquired by InfoSpace in July 2000 for $4 billion. [10] [11] Dogpile received a design facelift for the first time in December 2000. [12]
The Dogpile search engine earned the J.D. Power and Associates award for best Residential Online Search Engine Service in both 2006 [13] and 2007. [14]
In August 2008, Dogpile and Petfinder agreed to a search partnership. [15]
In November 2008, Dogpile launched its "Search and Rescue" program, which donates money to animal-related charities. [16] The program also helps people find help for animals in need. [16] By early-December 2008, people using the Dogpile search engine had raised $100,000 for Dogpile's Search and Rescue program. [17]
In July 2016, InfoSpace was sold by its parent company Blucora to OpenMail for $45 million in cash, putting Dogpile under the ownership of OpenMail. [18] OpenMail was later renamed System1. [19]
 | This section needs to be updated. The reason given is: Are we talking 2005 BC or 2005 AD? I think the first one might be closer to the truth at this point.(June 2023) |
In April 2005, Dogpile collaborated with researchers from 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 percent 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!, MSN Search, and Ask Jeeves found that only 1.1 percent of first page search results were the same across those search engines for a given query. [20]
These studies showed that each search engine provides vastly different results. While users of the search engine may not recognize a problem, it was shown that they use ~3 search engines per month. Dogpile realized that searchers are not necessarily finding the results they were looking for in one search engine and thus decided to redefine their existing metasearch engine to provide the best results. [21]
As of 2013, Dogpile listed the following features in addition to its search function: [22]
In computing, a search engine is an information retrieval software system designed to help find information stored on one or more computer systems. Search engines discover, crawl, transform, and store information for retrieval and presentation in response to user queries. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. The most widely used type of search engine is a web search engine, which searches for information on the World Wide Web.
WebCrawler is a search engine, and one of the oldest surviving search engines on the web today. For many years, it operated as a metasearch engine. WebCrawler was the first web search engine to provide full text search.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. Unpaid traffic may originate from different kinds of searches, including image search, video search, academic search, news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
AltaVista was a Web search engine established in 1995. It became one of the most-used early search engines, but lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, which retained the brand, but based all AltaVista searches on its own search engine. On July 8, 2013, the service was shut down by Yahoo!, and since then the domain has redirected to Yahoo!'s own search site.
The deep web, invisible web, or hidden web are parts of the World Wide Web whose contents are not indexed by standard web search-engine programs. This is in contrast to the "surface web", which is accessible to anyone using the Internet. Computer scientist Michael K. Bergman is credited with inventing the term in 2001 as a search-indexing term.
Excite is an American website operated by IAC that provides outsourced internet content such as a metasearch engine, with outsourced weather and news content on the main page. As of 2024, all of Excite's operations are controlled by services outside of the business.
A metasearch engine is an online information retrieval tool that uses the data of a web search engine to produce its own results. Metasearch engines take input from a user and immediately query search engines for results. Sufficient data is gathered, ranked, and presented to the users.
Yahoo! Search is a search engine owned and operated by Yahoo!, using Microsoft Bing to power results.
Federated search retrieves information from a variety of sources via a search application built on top of one or more search engines. A user makes a single query request which is distributed to the search engines, databases or other query engines participating in the federation. The federated search then aggregates the results that are received from the search engines for presentation to the user. Federated search can be used to integrate disparate information resources within a single large organization ("enterprise") or for the entire web.
Infospace, Inc. was an American company that offered private label search engine, online directory, and provider of metadata feeds. The company's flagship metasearch site was Dogpile and its other notable consumer brands were WebCrawler and MetaCrawler. After a 2012 rename to Blucora, the InfoSpace business unit was sold to data management company OpenMail.
A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages and other relevant information on the Web in response to a user's query. The user inputs a query within a web browser or a mobile app, and the search results are often a list of hyperlinks, accompanied by textual summaries and images. Users also have the option of limiting the search to a specific type of results, such as images, videos, or news.
Info is a metasearch engine, which as of 2013, provided results from search engines Google, Yahoo!, Ask, Bing, Yandex, and Open Directory. As of 2004, news search was powered by Topix.net, Info.com's web search engine information was powered by Shopping.com and Info.com had White Page and Yellow Page search. As of 2013, Info.com also had search plugins for Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox.
PolyCola, previously known as GahooYoogle, is a metasearch engine which was created by Arbel Hakopian.
LeapFish.com was a search aggregator that retrieved results from other portals and search engines, including Google, Bing and Yahoo!, and also search engines of blogs, videos etc. It was a registered trademark of Dotnext Inc, launched on 3 November 2008.
MetaCrawler is a search engine. It is a registered trademark of InfoSpace and was created by Erik Selberg.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to search engines.
MetaGer is a metasearch engine focused on protecting users' privacy. Based in Germany, and hosted as a cooperation between the German NGO 'SUMA-EV - Association for Free Access to Knowledge' and the University of Hannover, the system is built on 24 small-scale web crawlers under MetaGer's own control. In September 2013, MetaGer launched MetaGer.net, an English-language version of their search engine.
Searx is a free and open-source metasearch engine, available under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, with the aim of protecting the privacy of its users. To this end, Searx does not share users' IP addresses or search history with the search engines from which it gathers results. Tracking cookies served by the search engines are blocked, preventing user-profiling-based results modification. By default, Searx queries are submitted via HTTP POST, to prevent users' query keywords from appearing in webserver logs. Searx was inspired by the Seeks project, though it does not implement Seeks' peer-to-peer user-sourced results ranking.
Zoo.com is a metasearch engine, which as of 2006, provided results from search engines and other sources, including Google, Yahoo! and Wikipedia. Also as of 2006, Zoo.com provided news content from ABC News, Fox News and Yahoo! News.
System1 is an American Internet advertising company. Formerly known as OpenMail, it was founded in 2013. It describes itself as operating a "Responsive Acquisition Marketing Platform", and cites privacy as one of its principal foci, although it has been criticized for its influence on privacy-focussed properties, including search engine Startpage.com. It is headquartered in Marina del Rey, California.
