Dogpile adds MSN search

InfoSpace is set to add MSN search results to its Dogpile metasearch Web site, which already offers combined and separate results from Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves.

The idea behind Dogpile is that people can get the most comprehensive list of results using multiple search engines because they're not all scouring the same sites. A new study from researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania State University seems to back up that theory that there is relatively little overlap between the major search engines.

The study found that, of the first-page results from searches of 12,570 terms on the top four search engines, the percentage of total results shared by all four was just over 1 percent. About 11 percent of results were shared by two search engines, and nearly 85 percent of results were unique to one of the four engines.

Dogpile offers search for images, audio, video and yellow and white pages. InfoSpace plans to add search capabilities for mobile devices, enhanced video, blogs and maybe travel and jobs, said Brian Bowman, the company's vice president of marketing and product management.