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Showdown News Vol. 2 No. 5
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Inside: This is a short issue to catch up with some recent news and changes.
SEARCH ENGINE SHOWDOWN NEWSNew Search Engine Showdown relative and total size analyses are available. The new half billion record databases do well, if not quite as well as expected. The winner, with the highest number of records found with 33 searches, is iWon, using the iWon Advanced Search. This shows the impact of the Inktomi GEN3 500 million record database. On iWon, the regular search will only show one record per Web site while the advanced search does not cluster. So to see the full results, try the advanced search. Google, with its 500 million fully indexed Web pages, placed second in the tight race and also placed first on 14 of the 33 searches, more than any of the other search engines. If one single term was dropped from the analysis, Google would have placed first with iWon in second. That term, 'dulcitol,' will not be used in future analyses. iWon scored big on it primarily due to having indexed one site at great depth. Fast, Northern Light, and AltaVista, the long time leaders, did not fare too poorly. All three found more hits than any other search engine on at least a few searches. They also did not find that many fewer hits than the half billion leaders.
The other two Inktomi GEN3 users, Snap and HotBot, still fell below Fast, Northern Light, and AltaVista, although not by much. This shows the continued variations in coverage and retrieval by the different Inktomi partners, even when they choose to use the GEN3 database.
iWon Review Added
With the increasing prominence of iWon and its use of the Inktomi GEN3 database, a brief review of iWon has been added to Search Engine Showdown. A more detailed review should be available in the next few weeks.
SEARCH ENGINE NEWS:In addition to being one of the first Inktomi partners to implement the larger GEN3 database, iWon has made several other changes. It has added several new databases to provide supplementary information. Formerly a user of the automated Inktomi directory engine, iWon has switched to using the human-built LookSmart for their directory. iWon has also added results from Direct Hit, RealNames, and Fact City. The directory, Direct Hit, and Inktomi search engine databases can be searched separately from the search box. Google continues its rapid pace of change. Not too long ago, the access text for the cached Web pages (which would display Web pages as they looked when Google added them to their index) changed. Now it has changed back to simply "cached." Google also now offers the opportunity to see all pages from a site within search results if certain conditions are met. This unclustering ability is only available for searches that find less than 1,000 hits. Then the searcher must go to the last page and click on"repeat the search with the omitted results included" to get results unclustered. It is not as easy as AltaVista's and the Go approach, but it is better than nothing. HotBot also has finally added the ability to uncluster search results. Their uncluster option if more readily available than Google's, although it did not work properly at first. On HotBot's advanced search page, check the box to disables "Best Page Only Filter." While the first tests of this featured failed to make any difference whether the box was checked or not, the bugs seem to have been worked out and for some searches it now works as advertised.
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