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Dogpile

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Dogpile
Dogpile's homepage (September 2012)
Type of site
Metasearch engine
Available inEnglish
OwnerBlucora, Inc.
Created byAaron Flin
URLwww.dogpile.com

Dogpile is a metasearch engine for information on the World Wide Web that fetches results from Google, Yahoo! and Yandex, and includes results from several other popular search engines, including those from audio and video content providers. It is a registered trademark of Blucora, Inc.

History

Dogpile began operation in November 1995. The site was created and developed by Aaron Flin and later sold to Go2net (which was in turn acquired by Infospace).

From April 2001 to April 2007, Dogpile was primarily symbolized by a dog mascot. Named Arfie, the dog was featured in different themes from seasonal to holidays. From 2005 onwards, Dogpile added a link that gave the user a search query that corresponded with the theme the site was supporting.

In April 2005, Dogpile (owned and operated by InfoSpace, Inc. at the time) collaborated with researchers from University of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania State University to measure the overlap and ranking differences of leading Web search engines in order to gauge the benefits of using a metasearch engine to search the web. Results found that from 10,316 random user-defined queries from Google, Yahoo!, and Ask Jeeves only 3.2 percent of first page search results were the same across those search engines for a given query. Another study later that year using 12,570 random user-defined queries from Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search, and Ask Jeeves found that only 1.1 percent of first page search results were the same across those search engines for a given query.

These studies showed that each search engine provides vastly different results. While users of the search engine may not recognize a problem, it was shown that they use ~3 search engines per month. Dogpile realized that searchers are not necessarily finding results they were looking for in one search engine and thus decided to redefine their existing metasearch engine to provide the best results.[2]

The Dogpile search engine earned the J.D. Power and Associates award for best Residential Online Search Engine Service in both 2006[3] and 2007.[4]

Dogpile started a campaign in 2008 to use proceeds from site traffic to raise US$1 million for animals in need.[5]

In July 2010, Dogpile was ranked the 770th most popular website in the U.S., and 2548th most popular in the world by Alexa. Quantcast estimated 2.0 million unique U.S. visitors a month, and Compete estimated 1,953,280.[6][7][8]

Dogpile formerly fetched results from Ask and Bing.

Features

Dogpile features:[9]

  • Category Links: Links to help users focus their search on specific categories like News, Audio, etc.
  • Yellow Pages: Allows users to do a search using the Yellow Pages.
  • White Pages: Allows users to do a search using the White Pages.
  • Web Search Box: The area where users enter the search term. Enter keyword(s) and hit the Search button to retrieve the results.
  • Search Button: The button pressed to search for results.
  • Preferences: Links to a page where users can set a variety of customized search preferences.
  • Spelling Correction: Offers suggested spellings for words that may be misspelled and automatically corrects commonly misspelled keywords.
  • Search Filter: Blocks potentially explicit content for multimedia searches in Moderate setting and for all searches when in Heavy setting.
  • Statistics Bar: Shows how many results were returned for the search term.
  • About Results: Find out about Dogpile's policies regarding sponsored and non-sponsored search results.
  • IntelliFind: Recommends additional content based on the original search term.
  • Are You Looking For?: Offers suggested spellings for words that may be misspelled and other search keywords that seem to be related to the original search term.
  • Recent Searches: Keeps track of the 15 most recent searches. The list resets when the browser is closed.
  • Favorite Fetches: Shows recent popular searches from other users

Toolbar

Dogpile has also implemented a search toolbar that allows users an alternative way to search for internet content on Internet Explorer or Firefox using Dogpile.com metasearch technology.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Dogpile.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-04-01.
  2. ^ "A research study by Dogpile.com", retrieved 11-30-2014
  3. ^ "Residential Online Service Customer Satisfaction Study". J.D. Power and Associates. 2006-10-11. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
  4. ^ "2007 Residential Online Service Customer Satisfaction Study". J.D. Power and Associates. 2007-10-17. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
  5. ^ "Dogpile.com Lends A Paw to ASPCA with $1 Million Fundraising Campaign | With Video". Prnewswire.com. 2008-11-12. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
  6. ^ "Dogpile.com Site Info", Alexa, retrieved 8-29-2010
  7. ^ "Dogpile.com-- Quantcast Audience Profile", Quantcast, retrieved 8-29-2010
  8. ^ "Site Profile for dogpile.com", Compete, retrieved 8-29-2010
  9. ^ "Dogpile.com FAQ", retrieved 11-30-2014
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