Turbo10 search engine crawls the hidden Web

(Feb 14 2002) The London-based Turbo10 metasearch engine has now added parts of the "hidden Web" to its search results.

The hidden Web are parts of the World Wide Web that are normally not found by regular search engines, as the search engines cannot -- or will not -- index pages generated by automatic databases. A regular search engine will for instance not fill in a search form to get access to data on a Web site, it only follows regular Web links.

As Nigel Hamilton, Turbo10's Co-founder and Managing Director, says:

"Traditional search engines are just scratching the surface of the vast information reservoir because the majority use crawlers to index the Web. But a plethora of information lies in searchable databases that just can't be accessed by crawlers."

Among the sources accessed by Turbo10 are business associations, universities, libraries, and government departments.

Turbo10's users can for example search on specific legal databases such as AustLII - the Australasian Legal Information Institute.

Turbo10 has started to divide resources into topic-specific collections such as: Legal, Reference, News, Sport, and Finance. Each collection combines a selection of traditional search engines and Deep Net engines to broaden the search. For example, the Legal Collection connects to a host of niche legal sites enabling searchers to perform specific legal based queries.

Among other features at Turbo10 is the Search-o-Meter, a bar in the upper left corner of the page, that lets you quickly flick through the results without the need to scroll down.

You may also decide how to sort results, by letting Turbo10 present results from the search engines and databases that responds first at the top of the list, or by sorting according to source or relevance.

Turbo10 Topics is a new search engine clustering technique that helps you "home in" quickly on a relevant topic. For example, if you search on "apple", Turbo10's algorithm identifies "fruit" and "computers" as different topics. You may choose between the topics by using a special pull down menu.

We do miss a simple help page, though...

Turbo10 home page

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