Type in “metasearch” on Google, and find “Dogpile” as the first search result.

Research attorney Aaron Flin announced Dogpile on December 28, 1996. What a name! Rugby players rush together and pile on top of each another which is what Dogpile’s metasearch does. Dogpile has a mascot Arfie (a male mutt born on January 2, 1996) who is a retriever, quick to fetch “your paper (news” or whatever else you need.

It was one of the first to search multiple sources simultaneously. Metacrawler and Savvy Search started up in 1995, but they blended search results from several sources. Flin also added the “AND,” “NEAR,” and “NOT” connectors, so that the user could reformat a query and get follow up links from each of the search engines in the event that more results were available.

Go2Net, who had already added Metacrawler in 1998, bought Dogpile at $55 million in 1999. This placed Go2Net in the number two position of most popular meta search services. In 2000, InfoSpace merged with Go2Net but ran Metacrawler and Dogpile as unique services. In 2002, InfoSpace acquired Excite and Webcrawler at $10 million.

During 2002, InfoSpace brought the technologies supporting Dogpile, Metacrawler, Excite and Webcrawler together into one dynamite “back-end.” InfoSpace continued its own unique brand name with completely unique looks and features, but all four that InfoSpace owned are meta search engines using the same technology.

Dogpile is InfoSpace’s, meta search engine for the masses, including a simple presentation (a little like Google). It is meant to save time for the typical global consumer. In 2010 it returns the best possible results from Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Ask. InfoSpace says, “With Dogpile, you get the best from the big dogs without all the mess.”

Enter your query via basic or advanced search in the categories of web, images, video, news, yellow pages, and white pages. Then click “Go Fetch!” Click Preferences under the search area to personalize your searches with the desired level of filtering, bold search terms on or off, track and display your recent searches, and more.

Dogpile offers communities of interest such as My.Arfie.com for pet enthusiasts. Word passed around… says that Dogpile.com and My.Arfie.com would be a perfect acquisition by any major global chain or entity with strong ties to pets. Ask any pet owner, “What would you do for your pet?”

Other of its communities include the do Great Good in which a portion of one’s search revenue goes to charity and WebCrawler, the first web search engine to provide results in full text search on the entire web.

Through the Search & Rescue program, Dogpile.com users raised $250,000 dollars for animal rescue in just two months. Look forward to a podcast interview soon with Michal Kowalski, a co-founder of VoIPSwitch who runs a animal shelter in his spare time, a nonprofit activity his mother started.