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Dogpile is a cutesy, illustrated search engine that compiles results from other search engines, like Google and Yahoo. According to the website, it gathers results from multiple search engines ...

The Dogpile search engine is one of the oldest search services overall and one of the oldest metasearch engines still in use. Dogpile, like Metacrawler, became well-known for simultaneously pulling search results from several indexes and showing the best ones on a single page. This is what makes metasearch engines unique.

The Dogpile search engine is a meta-search engine that was created to solve the problem of inadequate search results. By taking results from multiple search engine indexes instead of just one, Dogpile provides a wider selection of content than services that use only their own indexes. Created in 1996, the Dogpile search engine is one of the oldest metasearch engines still in operation today, and one of the oldest existing search services in general.

A simple compound of dog and pile, a dog-pile described a tackling mound of American football players as early as 1921. An earlier form, found in the 1880s, was a pig pile. The expression is apparently inspired by the way dogs seem to pile on each other when feeding or playing. In 1935, a letter to the amateur radio magazine QST mentioned dog-pile as the “youthful antics” of a game where children jump on top of each other, vying to be on top.

Years ago, Dogpile preceded Google as a fast and efficient choice for web searching. Things changed in the late 1990s, Dogpile faded into obscurity, and Google became the leading platform. Today, however, Dogpile is coming back, with a growing index and a clean and quick presentation that is a testimony to its halcyon days.