September 27, 2006

SearchTab Display of Several Web Search Engines

I've just been doodling a few tweaks to my tabbed search engine display page, and the result is quite fun (well I think so) so I thought I'd post it here:

searchTabNew.png

The page has an API of sorts:

  • http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/searchTabs.php is the page itself. Arguments can be added on to the end of the URL by using a ?followed by the required argument(s). Multiple arguments are separated in the normal way with an ampersand (&).

  • q= defines the query string; quoted phrases are ok too (for example, q=%22space%20science%22 in the URL gives the quoted phrase "space science" in the query shown). If you call the page with a query in the URL, it will make that query available to all the search engines when the page loads.

  • s= defines the search engines to be displayed, and the order they should appear in. Each search engine is distinguished by a one (and maybe two, in future) character code, comma separated. The codes are as follows:
    - g Google
    - y Yahoo
    - m MSN/Microsoft WIndows Live
    - c Clusty
    - a altavista
    - A Ask
    The OU search tab is always provided. and still appears All the supported search tabs appear if the s argument is omitted.

    If you want to load a page with a couple of search engines, and no initial query, just use the s argument - e.g. http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/searchTabs.php?s=y,g gives you Yahoo! andf Google.


So for example, the URL http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/searchTabs.php?q=%22technology%20faculty%22%20robotics&s=a,c,y loads the following page:

searchTabdemo.png

The intention behind the search tabs page is to allow a relatively quick an easy comparison of several search engines using the same query.

This may be useful in information skills programmes, if only to help students realise that there are alternative, general purpose web search engines to Google, and that they all tend to give slightly different results.

if there are any search engines missing that you think really should be included, drop me a line.

Posted by ajh59 at September 27, 2006 10:15 PM
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