Metasearch engines

ToxSeek is an NLM metasearch engine and clustering tool that enables the simultaneous searching of many different toxicology and environmental health information databases and web sites. This tool includes 59 databases including the TOXNET Search tool, as well as information sources from NLM, NIH, US Government, International and other sources. 

Several metasearch programs automate the process of submitting a query to multiple search engines. These include Metacrawler at http //www. metacrawler.com and SurfWax at http //www.surfwax.com./ Note that metasearch engines tend to have two drawbacks They may overwhelm you with results (and insufficiently prune duplicates), and they often do not use some of the more popular search engines (such as Google or Northern Light). 

TABLE 3—3. Metasearch Engines for Web-Based Health Information... 

To facilitate the searches of multiple Internet sources, metasearching is useful. Metasearch tools launch a single query across a set of Web-based health sites. One query returns a merged and often ranked list of hits, allowing the user to search several databases at once. Table 3-3 describes the specifics of new metasearch engines available to search for Internet-based health information. 

To find the Internet address of a company not listed in Appendix B, try placing the company name or a reasonably abbreviated version of it between the prefix WWW. and the suffix. com. Otherwise, consult www.yahoo.com or a metasearch engine like www.dogpile.com. 

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