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Showdown News Vol. 1 No. 3
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= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = The sizes are changing, as the aftermath of the Lawrence and Giles article continues. Several search engines are announcing current or imminent significant size increases. Look for more debate and announcements related to size, scope, and coverage in the months to come. SEARCH ENGINE SHOWDOWN NEWS: New relative size and total size estimates from Search Engine Showdown are now available from comparison searches run on Aug. 4-5, 1999. Fast's All the Web search engine lived up to its claim of a database of more than 200 million pages and scored a solid first place finish. Northern Light and AltaVista, the second and third place search engines, showed growth since the last comparison in May. HotBot was added back to the comparison once I found out how to uncluster its search results. The comparison over time has been updated as well, and it shows some interesting changes in database coverage since the
May comparison. The overlap, unique hits, and dead links reports are being reworked and should be up in a couple of
weeks.
SEARCH ENGINE NEWS: Fast announced a larger, 200 million record database and claimed to be the largest search engine. The Search Engine Showdown analysis mentioned above verifies their claim. Fast has also changed its design a bit, putting All, Any, and Phrase search options in a drop down box. They now display the total hit count at the top of the first page of results rather than at the bottom, although in the Search Engine Showdown analysis, the claimed count was often higher than the actual number displayed. While Fast does have a larger database and quick response time, it still lacks many of the more powerful search features
available on other search engines. Also, I have been finding a fair number of duplicates and dead links. I will be analyzing
that in more depth over the next several weeks. And while Fast has shown impressive growth since the May analysis, it was
not a gradual growth. I have been checking it several times since May, and most of the time I found the exact same number
of hits that I did in May. So it seems to have had a sudden growth support.
Excite also announced that a new version of its database is coming in the middle of this month. It claims its new revisions
will help it keep up with the rapid pace of Web publishing. Among the promised changes are new "methods for identifying
and tracking Web pages as well as sophisticated spam detection and suppression techniques." Check back on Search Engine
Showdown in September to see if the next comparison will show Excite in the lead. Northern Light announced an agreement with Bell & Howell to add 683 new titles to its Special Collection database including publications in business, medicine, and the sciences. Most are being processed now,
but are not yet available. Watch for a new total number over 6,500 in the near future. They have also added the NTIS
bibliographic and abstracts database to their Special Collection as well as making that a component of their usgovsearch
service. AltaVista has discontinued their Relevant Paid Listing Program effective July 22, 1999. While they were always clearly
identified and separated from the regular search results, the program either generated too many user complaints or
insufficient cash flow to justify its continuation. Go2Net, which runs the multiple search engine MetaCrawler, has acquired DogPile. Consequently, Go2Net now owns three multiple search engines: MetaCrawler, DogPile, and DogPile's MetaFind. SEARCH ENGINE ARTICLES Greg R. Notess. "AltaVista's International Mirrors." EContent. 22(4): 59-62, Aug.-Sept. 1999, and available online. This On the Net column compares the main international AltaVista mirrors to the U.S. AltaVista. Some have separate databases or specialized services not available on others. While AltaVista has changed some of its links recently, most of the analysis of their mirror sites is still quite valid. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = |
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