Search engine of the month - Dogpile

01/10/2007

With so much attention being focused on the major search engines, we have decided to feature some smaller engines in our newsletter to give some feedback and point those wishing to experiment in a different direction. This month we review Dogpile, which has been around for a long time as far as search engines go (1996). Dogpile employs meta-crawler technology to produce results based on the top search engine results. This has the effect of aggregating the top results which saves having to jump between the different search engines.

Dogpile received the highest score for primary search engines in the J.D. Power and Associates 2007 Residential Online Service Customer Satisfaction Study. Whilst the search engine has been criticised for blending paid with natural it has been praised for providing a seamless approach to searching.

We've found the interface easy to use and it does present a more fluid approach to researching a topic on the internet. However, we found it quite hard to tell the difference between a paid link and a natural link. Paid links almost always come top as well, which is, I guess a standard feature of search these days. The major engines are a lot more transparent though (with the exception of Yahoo! Paid Inclusion).

I do like the "Askesque" sidebar that helps you refine your search as well as the fact that it records your previous searches in a sidebar. All in all a good point of call if you are in the research phase of looking for a product or service.