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Meta Search Engine Review

	SEARCH 1	SEARCH 2	SEARCH 3	METHOD	FREE	FEE	TABBED	# SITES	OTHER FEATURES AND NOTES FREE UNLESS NOTED
ONLINE SEARCH
AuctionFerret	4	107	601	INSTANT AND PROGRAM	YES	NO	CATEGORY	VARIES	Returned inaccurate results also has Chat, News
AuctionPatrol	0	64	147	INSTANT	YES	NO	NO	5	Auction Management Tools, PicHost, Counters, Chat, News
AuctionRover	0/0	11/64	0/512	INSTANT	YES	NO	YES/EBAY	33	Auction Management Tools, PicHost, Counters, Chat, News
AuctionWatch	0/19	47/179	311/1140	INSTANT	YES	NO	YES/EBAY	claim 300	PicHost, Counters,Chat, News, for fee price estimates
BiddersEdge	0	69	554	INSTANT	YES	NO	NO	75	Bidding Tools, tracking and notify
BidFind	0	0	9	INSTANT	YES	NO	NO	265	None of the top OAHs searched, Offer free auction house
iTrack				EMAIL SENT 1/2/3 DAYS	PARTIALLY	YES
RubyLane	0	1	5	INSTANT	YES	NO	NO	299	Primarily shops, does Amazon, Yahoo etc

FOR COMPARISON
Amazon	0	5	34	By Category Only Not Item	YES	NO	NA	Amazon	Too generalized to be of much use
eBay	16	192	1140	Item Only	YES	NO	NA	eBay	Excellent search, several options
Yahoo	0	28	192	Category/Seller/Item	YES	NO	NA	Yahoo	Excellent search, flexible, many optioned

Completed 14 Dec 1999
To do this report we looked at 8 Meta Search engines and searched for three items. The first item was a rarely occurring one, the second an expansion and generalization of the first, and the third item, an item that always returns a large number of auctions. AuctionWatch's Universal Search returned the largest and most accurate result. AuctionRover was the fastest and had some whimsical charm, but it, like the rest of the searches, returned less than 50% of Aws results.