WebFetch: Metasearch UK Style
February 22, 2009
InfoSpace was on my radar several years ago. Since that matter was resolved, I haven’t given the company much thought. I did a quick search of my notes and files about the company and came across a reminder to myself about WebFetch. The WebFetch.com site was an InfoSpace property when I first came across it. A quick visit to the site on February 21, 2009, revealed that the service is tagged as an InfoSpace property. I had this snippet of information in my InfoSpace folder:
Catering to English-language Internet users in Europe and using innovative metasearch technology, WebFetch® offers queries that draw results from many leading search engines all at once. In one click, users receive both free listings and paid-for results. All paid-for results are labeled as “sponsored.”
WebFetch is a comparison metasearch system. Your query is passed against Google’s, Microsoft’s, yahoo’s, and Ask’s Web index. You can review results in a single, relevance-ranked, deduplicated list. Alternatively you can look at the most relevant hits from each of the four search engines. I learned about the system several years ago. I noted a redesign in 2006 that included some graphical representations of search results. An FAQ about the service is here. With a click, one can narrow the search to UK or international content. My tests revealed that there was not significant difference in the results. I have a note to myself that says, “InfoSpace acquired WebFetch.com.” But I cannot verify that item of information in the files loaded on this system.
InfoSpace has been selling its mobile assets. The company seems to be in flux. What struck me when I visited WebFetch.com on February 21, 2009, was:
- There was no advertising on the pages displayed to me
- The site was clean but the information about the service took a bit of sleuthing to uncover
- The flashier features such as the visualization I noted in my 2006 notes to myself was no longer available.
InfoSpace has a long and somewhat interesting history. WebFetch.com seems to be marginalized, but I don’t think too much about other InfoSpace Web search properties either. These include the service named Dogpile.com, which continues to strike me as somewhat off center. Other search properties include MetaCrawler.com and WebCrawler.com. After reviewing each service, I concluded that Dogpile.com was the site that seemed the most well rounded.
What’s the future of metasearch? I think the term is being pushed aside by the notion of federated search. And, federated search itself is being displaced by systems that aggregate, parse, and assemble content. An example of this trend is the Fetch Technologies’ approach. This outfit snagged a Googler in late 2008. My conclusion: bet on Fetch, not WebFetch.com.
Stephen Arnold, February 22, 2009
Comments
One Response to “WebFetch: Metasearch UK Style”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
Please have a look at recently laucnched federated / meta search tool AnkaSearch (http://www.ankasoftware.com/ankasearch.html), which is a desktop based Metasearch tool.