Dogpile Search Engines

This engine lives up to its name by virtue of the fact that it searches 25 different Internet search engines such as: Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, InfoSeek, WebCraweler, Thunderstone, PlanetSearch and Yahoo. For UseNet searching it goes through DejaNews, Reference, AltaVista, and what has become known as the DejaNews old database. It looks for file transfer protocols locales it searches through Filez, and FTP search.

And there is a search through the Internet news wire feed, including Yahoo News Headlines, Excite News and InfoSeek NewsWires.

Dogpile supports the Boolean and Proximity operators of AND, OR, NOT, and NEAR, allowing users to narrow and refine their multisearches. Keep in mind, however, that all the engines that Dogpile will search for you may not always support operators such as NEAR, and occasionally no Boolean. In the case of engines, for instance, that don't support the use of the word NOT, then Dogpile will simply subtract that word from you search syntax — which doesn't quite yield the same results as saying Bill Clinton NOT Monica Lewinsky, but will help somewhat.

Dogpile points out that if you put in no AND connector, the engine assumes it anyway, such that a search for: Free AND Mac AND Software is the same as Free Mac Software.

The Dogpile multisearch engine also allows the use of quotes and parentheses.

After putting in your keyword or words, you press the "Fetch" button "Arfie" (as Dogpile calls its searchers) goes through three engines at a time before returning results. When you finish going through those results, you press the search button at the bottom of the search hits page to search the next set of three engines.

And thus, the "Dogpile" begins to grow and grow.