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I am wanting to display my search results along with the results of several other related search sites. Can Links SQL be modified to do something like this, or is there somewhere else I could get software that would do this?

Thanks for your help...

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You have to have a way to hook into the other search engines, make the search, then display the results.

There are various scripts to do this with ODP, but for the other search engines... you might be hittimg some "content copyright" problems.

http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/

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I was looking at places like askjeeves, metacrawler, and dogpile that display search results from several sites.. do they have special permission?

I'm not looking to use the open directory, excite, infoseek, google, etc., but more specialized search sites related to mine. I know how to link to search results from another search site, but it would be nice to display them on one page.

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For anyone who is interested, I just found some scripts here: http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/Searching/Remote_Searches/

I was hoping to find a way to use Links SQL



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Re: Meta Search In reply to
I'm not sure what the Ask Jeeves engine does, but because it lists the sites the data is from and presents them that way, they may get around it.... but I'd imagine they do have some special permission, or at least a working agreement.

People are very protective of their compillation data, and access to their sites. AskJeeves has to access their site in order to get the information, so some agreement is probably in place to allow this.



http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/

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Re: Meta Search In reply to
Any scripts can be incorporated into a larger whole. You just need to incorporate the correct calls into the search.cgi so that it searches the local databse, plus whatever else you'd want.

The problem with the Anaconda scripts, is that they are unmaintainable. This is why I have wondered if there is a group here that would like to try to develop a project that would cross search various sites.

The way Links works with the 'engine' and the ability to put scripts around it, and plug in, is what Anaconda has done. They have a core set of calls, and then a variety of plug ins.

I have a very strong feeling against using anything you can't get into the source code for, because you are dependent on them for upgrades. If they delay an upgrade, or things change such as they get bought out or go out of business, your income stream is compromised. Sometimes it's much worse to have your income stream cut off, than to not have it in place to begin with.

Think about what would happen if you depended on nn dollars a month from your addon, and your traffic was because you provided that service. Now, the site that the information was from changed their format, and the program no longer provided good data. You could not get into the code to make the fixes, and the company was in the process of being bought out or getting something else done, and during this time you lost half your customers, and almost all your revenue stream. Not a pretty picture.

With Links, you've licensed the code, but you can make the changes you need to to keep it working -- and as everyone is aware -- delays at the company's end, does not mean that your code can't be supported by other users.

This is not possible with "obfuscated" or pre-compiled source scripts.

http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/