Engines | Build Engines

Engines | Build Engines

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This menu item allows you to add new engines to iMetaSearch. There are three major steps to this process.

1) The first screen gathers information about the search engine

A.	Enter Engine Name - to start, click on the Engines \| Build Engines menu item and enter a name for this engine in the text box. This name will be used as a file name so it's best to only use letters and numbers.

B.	Go to First Results Page - use Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox to go to the search engine and search on a phrase of two words, surrounded by quotes. For example, you could search on the phrase "george bush". Go to the first page of results from that search.

C.	Click the First Page Button - iMetaSearch will gather information about the first page of results.

D.	Go to Second Results Page - using Internet Explorer or Firefox, go from the first page of results to the second page of results. This is usually done by clicking on the next link or the page 2 link.

E.	Click on the Second Page Button - iMetaSearch will gather information about the second page.

F.	Go to Third Results Page - using Internet Explorer or Firefox.

G.	Click on the Third Page Button - to gather the third page information.

H.	Click on the Forward Button - goes to the next screen.

2) The second screen shows iMetaSearch how to create requests to the search engine

A.	Select First Search Word - In the first text box, drag the mouse to select the first word of the two word phrase that you searched on. For example, if you searched on "george bush" then drag the mouse to highlight or select the word george.

B.	Select Second Search Word - In the second text box, drag the mouse to select the second word of the two word phrase. In our example, you would select the word bush.

***Checkmark Page Parameter(s) - In the third section, you must checkmark those parameters that say what page of results to get. In most cases, there is one parameter that tells what page to get, so you should put a checkmark in front of that parameter. In rare cases, there may be 2 or more paramters that need to be checked. At least one checkbox must be checked.

D.	Click the Process Button - the results of this step will be shown.

E.	Click the Forward Button - goes to the next screen.

***The idea in step 3 is that the URLs for the second page of results and third page of results are compared, and any differences show up as a checkbox followed by the page 2 characters in (green) and the page 3 characters in (blue). Your job is to tell iMetaSearch which of these differences determine the what page of results gets returned. That is, put a checkmark in front of those differences which determine what page of results to get.

3) The last screen shows iMetaSearch how to extract results from the search engine results page.

A.	Enter Number of Search Results - count the number of search results that have a checkbox directly in front of them. Put this number in the number box.

B.	Checkmark the First Result - now find the first result that starts with a checkbox and mark it by clicking the checkbox.

C.	Click the Guess Button - iMetaSearch will attempt to find the other results and put checkmarks in front of them.

Check if (Step 1 Results) = (Step 3 Results) - if iMetaSearch found the correct number of results (step 3 results match step 1 results) then go to step 5. If it did not find the correct number of results, then scan down the results and find the first mistake it made. This could either be not marking a result that should have been marked, or marking a link that is not a result. Correct the first mistake and then click Guess again. Keep correcting mistakes and clicking Guess until all results have been found. Usually no corrections are needed.

Fill in Expected Number of Results for Each Page - For example if the search engine normally finds 10 results per page then fill in each page with 10 in step 5. Sometimes a different number of results are returned for various reasons (there are no more results, error on the page, etc) but here we are asking for the normal number of results per page.

F.	Fill in the Limit for this Engine - the limit tells iMetaSearch how many results this engine can supply. For example ask.com can supply a maximum of 200 results, whereas Google can supply 1000 results. The default value is 1000 results.

G.	Click the Finish Button - creates the new *.eng file. In order to use the new engine you must exit and restart iMetaSearch.

This looks like a lot of steps to go through, until you get used to it. When you have experience, you can define a new engine in about 3 minutes. Once created, these engines can be shared with other iMetaSearch users. They are just text files, and to use them, simply put them in the iMetaSearch home directory, usually C:\Program Files\iMetaSearch. Then restart iMetaSearch and the new engines are ready to use.