Hello Everyone,

We recently released the official version of our meta-search engine, www.zapmeta.com, after being eight months in beta. Please provide us your input on the following factors:

1. Speed - Fast? Average? Slow?
What do you think of ZapMeta's speed comparing to other meta search engines?

2. zapmeta.com and www.zapmeta.com - Useful or Useless?
Advanced search enables users to restrict their search and the ability to customize the output of their results. Preferences were made to work in conjunction with advanced search. In other words, if you change a value in preferences, it will also be reflected in advanced search if the value is present.

3. Design - Visually appealing or overloaded with graphics?
What do you think of our effort in trying to put a distinction between ZapMeta's design and the plain html design of most search engines?

4. Result Relevancy - On the mark or not close at all?
We wanted ZapMeta to return relevant results, so sponsored links will never be included in the actual results (unless selected in preferences). Along with our smart algorithm, ZapMeta is able to produce more relevant results than most meta search engines. Or at least that's what we think, let us know your thoughts.

5. Bugs and Errors
Please report any bug or error if you encounter them.

Anything you dislike or like? Please let us know, all feedback, comments, and/or suggestions are highly appreciated.

Regards,
Kevin

Hi welcome to GIDForums and congratulations for getting out of beta. Exciting stuff this.

1. I would say the speed is average, but I justify that from the number of results (top 25) you are looking through from each search engine.

2. I do like the preferences section nothing too extravagant, but useful things like open in a new window or not and choosing the search engines to default to. However, I do like to be able to quickly disable a certain engine if I think they are throwing the results a bit much, but I may be unique on that and it doesn't take very long to go to the prefs and sort that out. I also like the fact that you can change the way it displays the information and if you want quick previews or not though that is a feature I don't worry about being on a decent bandwidth although others might.
In the preferences you allow the Open directory to be searched, but do you really mean the directory you've put in zapmeta with the DMOZ info. Not everyone will know what you mean even though it isn't a big thing.

3. Very nice chrome feel to it and easy on the eyes, but better graphics = bigger download required. Since you had gone for this option, I was very surprised that you hadn't installed mod_gzip on apache to get the zlib compression working making the download smaller. I had a go at your images in Macromedia Fireworks and without doing anything, I managed to save 1.5kb on it so it hadn't been optimised very well. (I've attached them as a zip at the bottom).

4. What happened to Teoma, part of the Ask network? Its a great search engine and I think its sadly missed from your collection. I'm not too certain about some of your default search engine selections:
Yahoo = Google with some alterations soon to be inktomi
ATW = Good choice
Wisenut = Stale as an old trout, but soon to be massively updated with grub (one to watch for, but not yet)
MSN = Looksmart/Zeal directory and Inktomi backfill
HotBot = Inktomi again
AOL = Google again with some AOL fiddling.

Is it not possible to get the SERPS from google rather than second hand as it would sound a lot better than AOL.

As for relevancy its been some good some bad, but that's from a selfish webmasters point of view. I'd have to spend a bit more time checking it out.

5. When you do a search on the web and then decide to check out the web directory, it forgets your search so you have to type it in again. How annoying!

6. Some of the search engines - Teoma, wisenut etc offer word groupings, which I find quite useful when I'm looking for something very specific, but can't quite get the wording correct. I could justify this addition into zapmeta too.

Hope this all helps.

Rob

Welcome to the forums, KHN!
As you intended, you came up with one of the more visually appealing search sites on the net. But, as Jrobbio said, you did sacrifice some speed in the effort. Jrobbio did a pretty good job on the review but I may as well add my voice to his:

1. Speed - Fast? Average? Slow?
Average, because of the amount of sites you are searching (great feature, by the way) and the images.

2. Advanced Search and Preferences - Useful or Useless?
I think that they enhance the searching experience immensly. I am a fan of Altavista's and have found that their preferences pane is almost always helpful when I am searching for something specific.
However, a help link or popup would be a great asset, especially on your preferences page as most of the available ones are pretty in-depth.


3. Design - Visually appealing or overloaded with graphics?
You have done it! Your SE stands out from others in the amount of versatility it offers (language translation was missed though) and in its design.

4. Result Relevancy - On the mark or not close at all?
It seemed to return relevent results during my queries.

5. Bugs and Errors
Didn't notice any!

Again, great job!