In an article from Nature magazine cited at Search Engine Watch, "The publicly indexable Web contains an estimated 800 million pages as of February 1999" and that's a lot of Web pages. As of September 1, 1999, the three search engines indexing the greatest number of Web pages were:

FAST
http://www.alltheweb.com/
(indexing 200 million pages)

Northern Light
http://www.northernlight.com/
(indexing 170 million pages)

AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com
(indexing 150 million pages)

As you can see, even FAST only indexes a small 25% of the publicly indexable Web pages.

In order to cover as much ground as possible and locate the greatest number of material, you could use each search engine separately or use one of the meta-search engines that searches multiple search engines at once. Dogpile, http://www.dogpile.com/ is one of the best of these, however it presents each engine's set of results separately, thereby making your review quite tedious and not winnowing out duplicates.

Every once in a while, I come across a tool for doing research on the Internet that makes me stand up and take notice. In this case, I want to devote this week's "Along Those Lines . . ." column to Copernic 99, a very intelligent meta-search tool that can help make your searching of the Internet a much less difficult process.

All about Copernic
Copernic 99 is the product of a company called http://www.copernic.com. Copernic is a piece of software that acts as a meta-search tool. Similar to Dogpile, it can search the Web based on keywords and phrases. However, it isn't limited to just the Web; it can be used to search Usenet newsgroups, newspapers, and many more categories of data on the Internet. Let's discuss some of the other strengths of Copernic:

1) For each category of search (Web, newpapers, newsgroups, e-mail addresses, Business & Finance, etc.), there are separate search engines, directories and other search facilities. You may use each of those tools or turn off those you don't want. This gives you control of what tools you use for each category.

2) When you issue a search, a window pops up showing the progress for each tool and the number of hits located by each. This tells you which tool has a larger number of resources for your type of search.

3) The search results list is the best feature of all! All duplicate results are consolidated into a single listing showing the title of the Web page (from the blue title bar at the top of the browser window), the Web address (URL), the relevancy ranking (calculated from across all the search tools used), a consolidated list of the search tools where the result was found, and a short description of the site taken from the top of the actual Web page. The consolidation of all search results from all the tools into a single entry on the list makes your job much easier. The work of winnowing out duplicates has been done for you!

4) Once you have the results, you can display them in your Web browser. Each entry in the results list can be clicked in a checkbox which you can then display as a separate Web page. That page can then be printed in total, complete with hyperlinks, and/or you can e-mail these in HTML or text format to yourself or to friends, colleagues and other researchers. (Note: Copernic is tightly integrated with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser and even has a specific additional toolbar that displays with it. However, you can easily use the Netscape Navigator as your display browser.)

5) You can modify or refine your search and resubmit it for another list of search results. The refined search is stored in a list and the search results associated with it are likewise stored. You can then have Copernic validate the links and even remove dead links that were received from the search engines or other resources.

6) Another beauty of Copernic is that it allows you to create folders in which your searches can stored. I've created folders, for instance, for specific surnames and for specific people's names I'm researching. Remember that your search and its results are stored there, and you can easily rerun the search without having to recreate it! That means once you get the search satisfactorily refined to meet your needs, you can easily open Copernic, open your JONES folder, click on the search and rerun it. It makes finding materials you previously located and looking at or updating them a snap. Another bonus is that you can copy and/or move searches from one folder to another.

7) Finally, Copernic updates your list of search engines for you so that you can always benefit from the very latest in Internet search tools.

How Do I Get It and How Much Does It Cost?
Copernic is available in two versions—Copernic 99 and Copernic 99 Plus—for both the IBM PC and the Macintosh, all available at the Copernic Web site (http://www.copernic.com). The basic Copernic 99 software is FREE! All you need to do is download and install it on your computer. It includes search facilities for the Web, newspapers, e-mail addresses, and books (booksellers). The downside of the free version is that there are advertisements on the screen.

Copernic 99 Plus is also available via download for $29.95. It provides more categories and several more extensive search features. You can also obtain free downloadable engine packages for Canadian news, jobs, MP3 sound files, cars, jobs, file searches and the Web in French, any of which you can uninstall if you decide you don't like them. In all, Copernic 99 offers a total of twenty-two categories today using 135 search tools, and more may be added. In this version of the software there are no ads displayed on the screen.

This is a most impressive piece of software. We used the free version at home for several weeks and found that it was a great help, both in our genealogical research and in our other research. (We located and ordered a digital camera over the Internet, finding many sites not found using our two favorite search engines and determining pricing variances of over $500!) We took the plunge and ordered the Copernic 99 Plus. However, many genealogical researchers will be very pleased and satisfied with the free version of the software.

I am not affiliated with Copernic Technologies, Inc., and don't get any financial compensation from them; however, when I find a great product or tool, I always want to share the word. You may want to investigate Copernic 99. It's a great product and can make your Internet searching faster, more efficient, and more precise.

Happy hunting!

George