| Search term | Ixquick | Metacrawler |
| pokemon |  Ixquick awards each site one star for each search engine that placed it in its top ten for your search, clearly indicating the quality of the result. Ixquick lists each of these search engines and the website's place on each engine's top ten list. | Metacrawler's cluttered results page lacks the stars, doesn't show the top-10 placement, and includes fewer outstanding search engines. |
| Britney Spears AND NOT NUDE | Ixquick understands the AND, OR, NOT and other modifiers, translates your search request so each search engine will understand it, and doesn't forward your request to engines that can't understand it. Result: relevant results. | Metacrawler returns pages of pornography, because it blindly forwarded your search request to search engines that don't understand that no means no! |
| Veget*rian | Ixquick knows which search engines can handle wildcards, multiple wildcards, wildcards in phrases, wildcards at the start of a word, and more. Ixquick will translate and forward your searches exclusively to the search engines that can properly respond to them. Result: relevant results, and you don't have to learn the intricacies of each search engine. | Metacrawler doesn't care that Excite doesn't accept wildcards--it blindly forwards the search request anyway. |
