To take engine's results isn't legal, you probably won't get sued and taken to court, but you wouldn't like it if someone stole links from you without your consent.
I know I would be ripping my hair out.
So even though you think you won't get a reply email the engine and see, they do reply may take time.

Hi Trent01,

I think it isn't illegal to use remote search engine results as long as you mention (or link to) the search engine where the information comes from.

Take care

Michael

Zoul,

Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm just trying to be the voice of worst case scenario here. But I refer you back to what Gilby posted straight from the AltaVista web site. Obviously, they do not want people using their content without their permission. Legal or not, it isn't ethically right to steal the content of another site even if you do give credit.

The ads that are on that site generate revenue that keep the site up and running. If you strip out all of the ads and give a short, "these results from AltaVista," on your page, AltaVista is losing revenue. If enough people continually take output from their site and strip out the ads, eventually AltaVista is going to get tired of it and randomly choose a few people as examples for everyone else.

Aside from all the rambling on what's legal and not, let's get back to the technical end of things.

After tweaking with the revised meta-search script from Alex, I have discover a few problems with the script's output.

Reiterating from a previous posting, see above, when searching for a general keyword like 'microsoft' or 'windows', AltaVista will yield these results respectively:

AltaVista found 'about' 9,889,515 Web pages for you

AND

AltaVista found 'about' 13,764,036 Web pages for you.

Keep in mind with the word 'about' in both results. With that in mind, try searching for a LESS general keyword like 'macs' or 'gossamer' and AltaVista will yield the following results respectively:

AltaVista found 310240 Web pages for you

AND

AltaVista found 33600 Web pages for you.

Looking at the above results for a less-general keyword, the word 'about' is omitted from AltaVista's results output such as AltaVista found 310240 Web pages - 'about' is nowhere to be found.

After looking at the script's codes carefully, I found the cause of this inconsistency. Take a look at the following line from the script below and change the statement "AltaVista found" TO "AltaVista found about".

# Loop through the results pulling out each link."
($total) = $results =~ /AltaVista found (\S+) Web pages/;

REPLACE with this:

($total) = $results =~ /AltaVista found about (\S+) Web pages/;

After doing this, the LESS general keyword will now yield the CORRECT output, BUT the MORE general keyword will yield the INCORRECT results which was the initial problem for a less-general search word.

As you can see, the problem has now shifted in the opposite direction and is now affecting the correct output for a much more general word.

So it is pretty obvious that for certain search words, AltaVista will find the exact # of results and uses two different output statements (i.e. AltaVista found or AltaVista found ABOUT).

Also note, that this problem will also affect the 'next hits toolbar' when a less-general word is use to search the script.

How do we fix this problem?

Any ideas?

Thanks!

John

[This message has been edited by jmurphy (edited December 19, 1998).]

One extra problem I just discovered a minute ago.

Go to http://gossamer-threads.com/scripts/misc/altavista.cgi and search for the word 'windows' - or any other word - and you will get the following results:

-----
page: 0 numhits: 13592142 maxhits: 10 nh: 1 i: 16 upper: 15 lower: 1

These results were pulled out of Altavista and are for demonstration purposes only!

A total of 13,592,142 web pages were found.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 ... [>>]
-----

Click on link # 15 and that will display the next 7 links to 22 as follows:

-----
page: 150 numhits: 13592142 maxhits: 10 nh: 15 i: 23 upper: 22 lower: 8

These results were pulled out of Altavista and are for demonstration purposes only!

A total of 13,592,142 web pages were found.
[<<] ... 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 ... [>>]
-----

Have you done that? Good, now click on link #20 and you will NOT get anymore results. See below:

-----
page: 200 numhits: 19085940 maxhits: 10 nh: 20 i: 28 upper: 27 lower: 13

These results were pulled out of Altavista and are for demonstration purposes only!

A total of 19,085,940 web pages were found.
[<<] ... 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 ... [>>]

[<<] ... 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 ... [>>]

Please check with Altavista before using their database.
-----

I think the reason for this is because AltaVista limits the number of link results to a maximum of 20 pages.

Can we do that too?

Thanks,

John

[This message has been edited by jmurphy (edited December 19, 1998).]

I've locked this thread and started a new one due to length.

Alex