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).]