Martin Ryder
University of Colorado at Denver
School of Education
Understanding Search Utilities
search engines
- Google Considered the largest of all search databases. While commercial sites are given initial status, they are well
identified with a color background. The remaining results are untainted by
commercial influence. Hits are ordered by relevancy from an objective
ranking formula which employs
the Web's collective intelligence.
- Teoma A search utility boasting exellent relevancy ranking of hit lists.
Teoma's technology has been acquired by Ask Jeeves.
- Yahoo! is a human compiled directory listing that divides the Web into categories.
- Fast Search
- AltaVista
- Clusty groups similar results together into clusters.
- Euroseek now owned by WorldLight (Sweeden) is available in 40 languages, including English, Spanish, German, and Esperanto, EuroSeek is a subject directory catering to European web browsers.
- Alexa is a browsing aid that groups certain sites together according to content relevance.
- The Open Directory Project (DMOZ) is a human compiled Web index, assembled by people who are experts in their field.
Just-In-Time Search Engines
These are search engines whose aim is dynamic updates (up to the minute changes). The content sources tend to be news organizations and journals.
- Google News Search presents information culled from many of the world's news sources collected over the previous week. The index is updated several times daily. more...
- New Bot (Lycos)
WIRED News
A search engine empowers the Internet user. Search engines
provide raw access to the Web, structuring its contents within the
constraints of a specific query. Search engines shift the balance of
power from authors, editors and publishers to readers and users of
information.
The utility of a search engine can be evaluated by five essential criteria:
- How exhaustive? (How many websites were searched?)
- How thorough? (were all pages searched? full text? including links?)
- How precise? (Does it return information relevant to the query?)
- How often? (Frequency of updates determines timeliness of results)
- How easy? (Is it easy to submit a query and interpret the results?)
- How flexible? (Can I customize a query? Can I filter the results?)
What is the measure of an indexing crawler?
How do you measure the power of a search engine? While there are multiple criteria, one that is easily measured is the frequency and scope of crawler visits to a specific web site. It is the web crawler that actually scans the raw data residing on the web
to build its search database. Like politicians in an election year, we feel that those
who come to call are the ones who are most in touch with our own thoughts; it is they who must
have the best pulse of our
community. Who comes to crawl at your web site? My particular site
has approximately 100 separate pages. If a
web crawler were to visit every page, coverage here would be 100% and
everything I have would be accessible to you via the corresponding search
engine.
The frequency of crawler visits determines the freshness of the information
returned in response to your search query.
Internet Subject Catalogs
Catalogs are structured directories which often include reviews to guide you. Because they are indexed manually, these resources are likely to overlook obscure sites, they index titles and abstracts rather than the full contents of sites, they artificially "pigeon hole" sites into categories, and it is a challenge to keep them up to date.
- Yahoo (Most widely used internet catalog)
- Magellan! Online directory of reviewed and rated sites.
About Searching and Search Tools
The skill of using any tool comes with practice. But it also comes through
an understanding of what the tool can do and what it can't. The following
resources offer good insight into the nature of search utilities, how they
work, why one might be preferable over another, and how we can best make
use of them.
Searching Strategies
Searching the Net PC Magazine
See also Adding Your URL to the Web
All links verified October 01, 2008.
Main Index
October 01, 2008