tyBit: Hydra-headed Internet Search Engine

Most Internet users perform online searches using Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN, or some other search engine. The results, depending on your search terms are usually pretty good. But what if you could search the Internet using multiple search engines - simultaneously? Now you can, courtesy of tyBit.

tyBit not only enables to you search with multiple search engines at the same time, but it gives you control over your Internet searches, and how the results are displayed to you - the results are sortable by address, source, name or description, and you can save them for future reference. With tyBit, you even control the number of results returned per search engine, and the number of results displayed per page. The number of image displayed per search as well as the zip code (to enable local searches) are other options available.

The options box list 18 different search engines, but only Google, Yahoo, and MSN are usable. The rest are marked as coming soon. Hakia, which I covered here is one of those not yet implemented. The two most important options available in tybit’s toolbar are the option to specify local searches by zip code, and the facility to email search results to a friend.

tyBit is marked as a beta software, but I have had no problem since I installed it. Although still a Windows-only (Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox) browser toolbar, a tyBit representative I spoke to said their development team is working on Linux and MacOS X versions, but no time frame has been set for the release of those versions.

There’s still a lot of features to explore under tyBit’s hood, and I will be writing one more post about them in about a week.