The Search Broker directs your question to a search engine dealing specifically with the subject of your question. It does not use magic nor does it attempt to read your mind. It simply knows about many search engines (over 400 and growing) in numerous subjects. You tell it the subject area and the query, and it selects the search engine, reformats the query, forwards it to the right place, and gives you the results exactly as the search engine would (ads and all). The goal is to give you direct relevant answers as quickly as possible, without making you sift through hundreds of false leads. The Search Broker does not attempt to find more results; it attempts to find fewer, but better, results. Sometimes you need to search the whole web, but often specialized reference databases will work better.

The Search Broker uses a two-level search process. On the Search Broker Home Page, the first word is always the subject and the rest is the actual query. The subject may be two words separated by a hyphen; for example, flight-schedule. Subjects can have many aliases and shortcuts. For example, instead of flight-schedule you can write fly, flying, or flight.

Once you have chosen a subject and receieved some results, you can continue to search within that subject by changing the query text. Or, if you want to try a new subject, press the New Subject button on the form and enter a two-level search as you would on the main page.

You can find subjects in two ways. The list of all available subjects is given in the Search Broker Home Page. The list is arranged by topics (some subjects may appear in more than one topic). Clicking on a subject will bring information about it, including directions of use, a link to the original search service, related subjects, examples of use, and a list of aliases. Clicking on a topic will bring information about all the subjects in that topic.

You can also search the Search Broker's own database by typing just one word. If your word matches a subject you will get all the information about it and related subjects. If your subject is not yet available, you'll have the option of trying a different subject (some near-misses may be recommended to you), or forwarding your original subject to a general web search engine (Lycos).

If you are on a slow connection and downloading the home page with all the subjects takes too long, go to the Text Only page, which totals around 2K bytes and contains the single search box that can get you anywhere.

How we select the subjects and the databases.

More information and tips on how to form queries.

The Search Broker was conceived and developed by Udi Manber and Peter A. Bigot at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Arizona.
Copyright © 1997, Arizona Board of Regents

This site does not eat nor serve any cookies. Let's keep surfing low fat.