Search Broker
Udi Manber
University of Arizona The Search Broker, developed by Udi Manber and Peter Bigot at the University of Arizona, presents a different approach to web searching. It maintains a database of over 400 search engines, each covering a different subject. Users specify the subject of their queries (as the first word of the query), and the Search Broker automatically forwards the query to the relevant search engine. Subjects include stocks, weather, flight schedule, news, languages, nutrition, various medical information, government, movies, patent, software, science, TV, hotels, history, art, people, law, maps, books, and 400 more. For example, stocks ibm will return the current value of IBM's stock, weather seattle will give the current weather forcast for Seattle, and acronym grep will tell you the meaning of this acronym. The Search Broker's goal is to give better focus to web searches, but directing specific queries to specific places.
