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Showdown News Vol. 1 No. 2
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= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = As summer continues to heat up, the search engine industry has been active with Disney announcing plans to buy the rest of Infoseek and form a new company and a new study is out in Nature about search engines. Read on for Northern Light's new display defaults, new books, and more. THE NATURE ARTICLE A new study from Steve Lawrence and C. Lee Giles in NATURE ["Accessibility and Distribution of Information on the Web," NATURE 400(6740): 107-109, July 8, 1999.] estimates the publicly indexable Web at 800 million pages and that the largest search engine only covers about 16% of those pages. Some key points from the article:
Read a more detailed summary and analysis, or discuss the study on the Search Engine Showdown Forums. SEARCH ENGINE SHOWDOWN NEWS: The multiple search engine page has updated descriptions of SavvySearch and others, added BullsEye to the desktop multiple search engines, and noted that WebCompass has been discontinued. Reviews for Direct Hit and the Open Directory have been added to the Reviews page as well as linked from the directory page and elsewhere on the site as appropriate. Several other search engine reviews have been updated including the addition of a new section on databases to the reviews. This section outlines what databases the search engines offer as well as what partner agreements they have made with other companies. It thus identifies the use of the AskJeeves and RealNames databases on AltaVista while also noting that the AltaVista database will be used by MSN Search sometime in the near future. Northern Light now only provides 10 hits by default. I always liked seeing at least 25 hits and find the 10 hit limit a step backward. There is no obvious option to change the limit, although after running a search you can add Northern Light also now clusters results by site, using what they call "embedded folders." Only the page with the highest relevance score shows up. The other hits are in the embedded folder. If the second highest scoring record is close enough to the first, the score and title of that page will appear after the URL. Personally, I have problems with both of these changes. I always liked the 25 hits at a time and would prefer an option, at least, to choose how many to see. I would also like to have the option to uncluster the results from the embedded folders. Join the discussion about it and let me know your opinions in the Showdown Forums or on search-l. A couple new books have been added to the Search Engine Readings page. Check it out for more information on the following: SEARCH ENGINE NEWS: AltaVista has been bought by CMGI, a major investor in Lycos. Numerous other changes have followed that announcement. They have changed their appearance and added search options for images, video, and audio on the front page of the Simple Search. They now guarantee that their index will be fully refreshed every 28 days or less. They also link to searches from About.com (formerly the Mining Co.) at the bottom of their search results. They have also added My AltaVista (personalization capability with local content) and AltaVista Finance. And then
AltaVista is also looking at entering the market as a free Internet access provider. Basically, AltaVista is finally making a
major push for itself as a portal. Direct Hit is now being used by MSN Search and Lycos. On MSN Search, the Direct Hit results are available with another click. On Lycos, they appear on the top of the Web Pages hits. LookSmart has added LookSmart Live, a service for submitting questions which will be answered personally by LookSmart editors. They promise a response within 24 hours. At least on the one question I tried, a response came through in just a couple of hours. LookSmart has also redesigned its front page. HotBot also redesigned their site a bit, making the search box more prominent. Previously, it was more hidden in the left-hand margin and was also a much smaller search box. Netscape's search page has changed again, adding Google to its choices. The Netscape search is now a combination of the Open Directory with a follow-up search on Google. Excite is still there, but not as a part of Netscape Search. Snap acquires an equity stake in GlobalBrain.net, a company developing a popularity ranking technology for search
engines. It does not yet appear to be integrated into Snap at this point. Microsoft plans to use RealNames in both MSN and Internet Explorer in the 3rd quarter. Other search partners include
AltaVista, Go, LookSmart, and Inktomi. See the URL for their current list. SEARCH ENGINE READINGS Adrienne Mand. "Unlaunched Site Making Digerati Google-Eyed." AdWeek Online. July 12, 1999. <http://www.adweek.com/interactive/iqnews02.asp> Greg R. Notess. "Search Engine Showdown." Planet IT. Internet/Intranets TechCenter. 7/12/99.
<http://www.planetit.com/techcenters/docs/internet_&_intranet/technology/PIT19990714S0018> New books mentioned earlier: See also the summary page on the NATURE article for links to other news and reports on that article. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = |
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