Zip2 Corp. (Acquired By Compaq / Alta Vista)

The edge is two-fold: proprietary metasearch technology and relationships with leading search engines. Together, it's how they build on the billions of R&D search investments made by the search industry as a whole. No single search engine covers the entire Internet. Different engines use different technologies and thus draw different results from the vast pool of available information. The metasearch-driven searches cover more of the Internet because they combine the most relevant returns from multiple search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Ask, and Bing. InfoSpace's metasearch technology provides users with the ''best of the best'' results each time they search. InfoSpace metasearch helps advertisers achieve a much higher match rate than any other search engine and delivers more sponsored listings per commercial search. Sites hosting metasearch receive a higher pay-per-click rate, which is a key selling point when InfoSpace engages with potential private-label search customers. Major search engines can benefit by building their networks through InfoSpace metasearch sites and through the private-label search solutions they create for customers who want to offer a preferred search resource under their own brand.

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