The only reason for searching the Internet is to find Web pages of value. The only meaningful measurement is the total elapsed time from information request to acquiring acceptable results. There is no faster tool than Mata Hari® using this standard. Here is why:

The complete cycle to acquiring desired information has several steps. Let's review how you perform it manually:

1. Pose a query to a search engine to get a list of potential Web page links that may or may not meet requirements — wait for search engine to return the first page of the link list
2. Evaluate potential links and click on one that appears to have merit — wait for it to download
3. Evaluate the returned Web page for acceptability
4. If unacceptable, go back to the search engine listing of potential links and repeat from step 2
5. If partially acceptable, remember or bookmark the Web page and repeat from step 2
6. If no links appear acceptable, refine query, and pose again to search engine — return to step 1
7. If the results from the specific search engine are not acceptable, repeat entire process for each additional search engine you decide to try.

This is a time-consuming process which can get old fast! Specific search engines or desktop search tools may appear faster than Mata Hari because they only perform one or a few of these steps. But the remaining steps are not automated and can literally cause hours to be wasted waiting, downloading, and viewing pages on a one-by-one basis.

Instead, Mata Hari does many of these steps automatically and in PARALLEL. Also, it is able to operate in the background while you do other tasks. Multiple “threads” or connections are used to get Web page listings from multiple search engines simultaneously. As soon as these listings are returned from the search engines, Mata Hari begins downloading the actual Web pages (minus images) from multiple sites — again, simultaneously. Mata Hari can also simultaneously submit multiple queries to multiple search engines. Web page links are evaluated at two stages for whether they are “acceptable”, and if so, are then scored. If the Web page link is a duplicate or does not first meet its site filter criteria, it is immediately rejected so no processing time is lost downloading a useless Web page. Other criteria can only be tested after the Web page is downloaded and evaluated.

Potential misconceptions can arise when not comparing search tools on an apples-to-apples basis. For example, on Mata Hari's search progress screen during the search, the “total” value represents all Web page links identified during that search. In competitor products, the equivalent value is often presented as “results”. Yet those “results” DO NOT represent the documents desired, only those links returned by the source search engines as potential documents. This is because those links include many duplicates, many dead links (for Web pages that have been moved or no longer exist), and even mis-indexed pages (content having nothing to do with query -- this can occur by human indexing error or by Web developers including metatags having nothing to do with the page topic.) Because of its powerful screening capabilities, only “accepted” results in Mata Hari reflect the desired search criteria.

Something we think you'll find interesting is to check out the rate at which Mata Hari downloads new links and documents simultaneously from the Internet — not through just a big pipe, but even from a 28.8K modem. There are many ways and third-party tools to monitor your connection to the Internet while searching with Mata Hari. Run whatever tool you have. If you don't have any monitoring tools, double click on the modem lights icon that appears on your task bar while you are connected. These numbers represent the amount of information Mata Hari is downloading. You'll be amazed at the rate Mata Hari is delivering data to your system with any size pipe.

The above description doesn't even speak of the analysis capabilities available to you once your search has completed. The Results Screen is crammed with features that quickly help you sort through and manipulate all of the accepted pages. With this kind of power, finding the pages you want is more automated and faster than ever before.