Search Engines
Search Engines
There are many complaints aimed at search engines these days. Until recently, none of them covered more than about a quarter of the Web, which is estimated to consist of more than one billion pages. Four of the leading search engines are Yahoo! , FAST
, Northern Light, and Alta Vista . Meta search engines such as Dogpile send search queries to a number of different search engines simultaneously.The current darling of the critics is Google , which claims to cover one billion pages.
1. Search engines are either "individual" (Alta Vista, Hot Bot) or "meta" (Dogpile, Metacrawler). For a very wide search try the metasearch engine that searches 1,300 engines divided into 30 categories, GoGettem .
2. Search engines are either "free-ware" (Dogpile, Alta Vista) or "proprietary" (Wisdom Builder's Gold Rush, Inforian's Quest 99 ).
3. Search engines are either "Web-based" (Alta Vista, Dogpile) or "hard disk resident" (Quest 99, Gold Rush, Copernic ).
4. Search engines are either "free output" (Dogpile, Hot Bot), or "fee output" (Northern Light's Special Collection materials).
5. Search engines are either "general" (Metacrawler, Hot Bot), or "specific" (Law Crawler ).
6. Search engines are either "in-house" (HotBot), or "open source" ( Netscape Search ). While Netscape was still trying to remain a viable stand-alone company, it established the Open Directory Project, which utilizes thousands of volunteer "editors" who oversee over 100,000 directory topic categories. This search engine is tied to that directory.
The source for inside information about search engines is Search Engine Watch . The site offers both a free and a subscription newsletter.
Commentary on Northern Light. The darling of the engines is currently Northern Light. I recently ran my name through it and found it to provide fewer hits (in October 1999) than it produced more than a year earlier. If that is progress, good luck. It has also recently become the home for the archives of Fortune Magazine. Previously, old issues were available for free at the Fortune site. Now it will cost anywhere from $1 to $4 to download one. Again, this is progress?
Commentary on Copernic. CNET's reviewers love Copernic. This disk-resident search program is available in both free and proprietary versions. It is a meta engine that sends simultaneous queries to most of the best individual engines. It has an attractive interface and as the engines are being queried it presents you with bar charts that shows you how things are progessing. Engineers should love it. I have been fairly pleased with the results, even if it can get somewhat confusing trying to access the results page after you have followed a hit to its source. Commentary on Law Crawler. The idea behind Law Crawler is great. Limit the engine's searching to only those sites that a related to the law and the legal profession. I checked it out by running my name through it. I came up with a listing off Joe Bob Briggs' Monstervision television show site, where I had answered a trivia question. I didn't realize that time spent watching Monstervision was legal research.
Commentary on Ask Jeeves.
Ask Jeeves is one of the most talked-about recent arrivals on the search scene. It conjures images of the Star Trek computer or Hal from 2001. You frame your queries in plain English. It has a reservoir of previously-asked questions that continues to grow. When you ask a question, it comes back with a series of previously asked similar questions and answers. If you ask very specific, technical questions, don't be surprised if you receive some very rudimentary responses.
Search Engine FAQ (1) Who is the leading provider of search engine services? Answer: Inktomi . You've probably used its service without ever knowing it. Check out its site to see a list of its customers. (2) What is the name of the "Macintosh-only search engine"? Answer: Macinstein and it uses the "Sherlock" plug in.
(3) Is it difficult to add a search engine to your own Web site? Answer: It used to be, but Atomz.com makes it very easy. This free service is simple to use and it works like a charm. Your site is copied onto the Atomz.com server, and search requests are actually routed there. Whenever you make changes to your site, you can go to the site and have your revised site "indexed," or you can arrange for Atomz.com to schedule periodic indexes.
Check out the September and October 1999 issues of THE PRACTICAL LAWYER for Web-Wise Lawyer columns dealing with the current state of Web search engines.