Combining Google and Yahoo. The Ultimate in Search Relevance

If you often search for difficult to find (niche/technical) information, you probably do not just use one search engine, you may try your luck on multiple search engines.

Most of my searches start with Google, and when I don't find what I'm looking for on the first 3 pages, I usually try the same keywords on Yahoo, and if that doesn't work I'll hit MSN in a desperate final attempt. If none of these yield results, I change my keywords and try synonyms, or change my angle completely. Obviously this is an time consuming exercise, but more often than not the desired results are obtained.

I've always thought that if you could make a cross linking between the mayor search engines and could see where the same page is linked to in comparison with its rating that this would give you the best of both worlds, and give you a sort of super algorithm providing the benefits of multiple search algorithms of the combined search engines.

Earlier today I was trying to find a list of all known EMV smartcard applications, EMV is a very small niche market and how I put bread on the table, however information about this field is difficult to come by... after trying Google and Yahoo and getting no joy, I decided to try and find something to help speed up this process.

My Search paid off immediately, and I landed on this Golden Nugget; as usual, I'm was not the first to come up this idea, and this guy has already implemented the matching part, and presents it in a fancy visual link diagram.

I believe it can be improved by "relisting" the combined search results by listing only results that are found by both engines and listing them by the average rating on both engines... now that would be really sweet!