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Showdown News Vol. 3 No. 1
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Well, after a far lengthier break than I intended, Showdown News is back on track, and I hope to be sending the newsletter out at least monthly. There have been great changes in the search engine industry and to specific search engines over the past few months. I will highlight only a few of the more significant changes for searchers this time and try to catch up with some of the other changes in subsequent issues. While economic pressures have caused some interesting shake-ups at Go, Inktomi, AltaVista, and others, Google has been busy expanding features, size, and capabilities. GOOGLE INDEXES PDF FILES In a major break with the tradition of other search engines, Google has begun indexing the full text of Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF)
files. These are identified in Google search results with a [PDF] note at the front. Instead of a cached copy of the full PDF file, Google offers a
text version. Google does not offer a way to search only their indexed PDF files, but just adding PDF as an extra search term can often bring up
some results. According to Chris Sherman's report on Websearch.about.com (see link below), Google has already indexed 13 million PDF files.
Full implementation on all Google's search clusters is not due until Feb. 5, so you may or may not find any PDF files in your results until that
time. This is a significant addition to their already large Web database, and it means that Google may well find even more documents not
available from other search engines.
GOOGLE ADDS TITLE AND URL FIELD SEARCHES In December, Google finally expanded its field search offerings. On their revised Advanced Search page, there is an "Occurrences" option which
gives choices for "in the title of the page" or "in the URL of the page." These are also available on the regular Google search by using allintitle:
or allinurl: as the field labels. It is unfortunate that Google does not just use the title: and url: syntax of AltaVista and others, but they chose not
to. In addition, these field searches can not yet be combined with other search terms. Thus, Google does not provide a way to search for one
word in a title and another word that occurs anywhere in the page text.
GOOGLE ADDS OR In October, Google finally introduced support for the Boolean OR operator. It must be entered in all upper case as in x OR y. Google still does
not support nesting or the AND and NOT operators, so use of the OR operator involves some careful ordering of terms. Google does default to
an AND operation between terms, so it is now possible to do some Boolean operations on Google. However, not all permutations work, and
some come up with strange results. See the Search Engine Showdown analysis for hints on what works and what does not.
ALTAVISTA ADDS POWER SEARCH Back in August, AltaVista introduced a Power Search, which provides a middle road between its simple and advanced search forms. It has a more extensive scripted form which can make the powerful search features of the Advanced Search page available to searchers without requiring knowledge of the special Advanced Search syntax. It is similar to HotBot's Power Search page in terms of options and layout. At first, the Power Search was available as a link in the left-hand navigation bar. However, in December, AltaVista modified the user interface so that the Power Search link was placed below and to the right of the AltaVista search box with the label of "More Search Options." AltaVista has also been in the news lately, along with many another Web company, for cutting staff and cutting costs. They have moved away
from the portal business and are refocusing their energies on search, especially their AltaVista 3.0 search engine product which they sell and
their consumer site, the one the rest of us search. Just tonight, they have launched a new version, stripped of much of the former portal content.
The Power Search link has also vanished, but the Power Search page remains and continues to function at the following URL. Stay tuned for
updates and an explanation of some of the changes at AltaVista in the next issue.
THE DEMISE OF GO Disney has announced plans to abandon the Go portal. The site will continue for a time, but the go.com domain name and the Infoseek search
engine components will be sold off. While I suspect that someone will buy and maintain the Infoseek search engine, only time will tell whether
or not it will remain as a viable search tool for either general or expert searchers.
NORTHERN LIGHT LAUNCHES SINGLEPOINT In December, Northern Light announced the launch of SinglePoint. This commercial product is targeted at large companies, specifically those
seeking help in creating an enterprise information portal. SinglePoint includes capabilities, tools, and methods for integrating and searching
content and can be customized for the specific company. This will be of most interest for intranet search development.
DOGPILE RELAUNCHED BY NEW OWNER, INFOSPACE For the first time since 1996, Dogpile has been redesigned. Improvements include faster loading of the home page and results pages. InfoSpace
users should also note that the search box on the main InfoSpace page uses Dogpile for its Web Search. Yet there will be some differences in
order for the InfoSpace results as compared to searches entered directly into Dogpile.
DEJA.COM SELLS PRECISION BUYING SERVICE Deja.com announced that Half.com, an eBay company, purchased Deja's Precision Buying Service, their product rating component. That leaves
the Usenet news search engine as Deja.com's main offering, sort of like it was a few years ago. Unfortunately, the older archive, pre-May 1999,
is still unavailable.
SEARCH ENGINE SHOWDOWN NEWS: There have been a variety of updates including a new iWon review, details about Google's new features, updated statistics, and more on Search
Engine Showdown. And more updates are planned. Check out the site for more details.
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