DATABASE - On the Nets, April 1997

Greg R. Notess
Reference Librarian
Montana State University

ON THE NETS

New Databases from the Internet Search Services

DATABASE, April 1997
Copyright © Online Inc.

Featured Sites
Excite http://www.excite.com/ Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com/ Infoseek http://www.infoseek.com/ Lycos http://www.lycos.com/

Featured Sites

Excite
http://www.excite.com/

Yahoo!
http://www.yahoo.com/

Infoseek
http://www.infoseek.com/

Lycos
http://www.lycos.com/

The competition is fierce on the Internet between the Web search engines and finding aids. Not too far back in the history of the Internet, users were happy to find any search engine or subject directory that had a substantial database of records for Internet resources. Now that Lycos, WebCrawler, Yahoo!, and Inktomi have emerged from their university origins to become commercial companies, they and their fellows are all looking at ways of expanding their services beyond search engines and subject directories. As they compete against each other for market share and advertising dollars tied to that market share, they look for ways to distinguish themselves from their competitors. While broadening services beyond Internet indexing, they are adding a variety of other databases. In a sense, their continued growth in databases and information content is making them into miniature online services.

DOUBLE DUTY

The first and most common growth area for these new online services is to cover both Web indexing and a sub-ject directory approach to Internet resources. Thus, Excite offers both the subject classified Excite Reviews and the full Excite Search keyword index. Lycos added the smaller, subjectarranged databases of Top 5% Sites and Sites by Subject to its original Internet search engine. Both Magellan and WebCrawler also offer a large keyword-searchable database of Internet resources and a smaller, subject-classified database. Infoseek split its databases into the automatically-generated subject arrangement of UltraSmart and the much larger keyword search engine, Ultraseek. The best known subject directory, Yahoo!, now runs an automatic follow-up search on AltaVista when no hits turn up in Yahoo!.

Not all the search engines have strayed from their original purpose. At least at the time of this writing, two of the largest search engines, AltaVista and HotBot, have not added subject directories or other databases. But for those that are expanding their information content, this double-duty keyword search and subject access is only the beginning. Numerous other databases have been added as well.

These additions are driven by the desire to increase the number of visitors to the site, thereby attracting more advertising dollars. So the databases need to be of broad general interest, freely available to the user, and easy to use. So what are these other databases that are being offered? How do they compare with their competitors, and who produces the actual information content? The three main areas for new database growth at this juncture are news, directories, and other reference resources.

NEWS

Local newspapers, international newswires, government agencies, and private companies are all turning to the Net for publishing news, and this is occurring in ever greater numbers. The online, real-time nature of the Internet is a natural for delivering up-to-date information such as news. With major news sources such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Reuters all delivering daily doses of the news, the user is faced with the dilemma of choosing which news sites to bookmark. The Internet search engines have capitalized on this interest in news by adding daily doses of the news as one of their supplemental databases. Yahoo! features reports from Reuters in categories which cover national, international, business, political, technology, entertainment, health, and sports news.

The news sections are denoted with the Xtra! tag or available directly under Today's News. These Reuters stories are fairly brief, and with only about ten stories per category, there is not much depth to the coverage. On the other hand, they are one of the few news sources that offers an archive. The archive only covers the past week, but that is better than a single day's coverage. Yahoo! can also deliver personalized newspages through its My Yahoo! features.

Infoseek counters on both sides with its News Center. Although it does not offer an archive of older stories, Infoseek also relies on Reuters for its news content. The News Center offers browsing of the Reuters stories in a way similar to Yahoo!. Like the My Yahoo! personalized page, users can request specific categories for their personalized Infoseek news page.

Rather than relying on a single source of news, Lycos' Top News includes many national and international news sources, ranging from the Seattle Times to MSNBC and from the Daily Yomiuri to the Jerusalem Post. This approach to delivering news gives the user a much better sense of the eclectic and diverse offerings on the Internet. It also can include much more in-depth stories. However, no personalized option or archives are yet available from Lycos' interface. In addition, Lycos does not explain how it selects its sources. The categorization can be surprising at times, such as finding environmental-hazard stories listed under the Weather category.

Excite joins the news fray with its Excite Live!, another personalized news service. Unlike the other news services, Excite provides no option for browsing until the news selection has been customized. This is somewhat annoying for those that choose not to go through the process for personalized selections. However, Excite does offer some nice features in the Excite Live! service. Once again, the primary news source is Reuters.

NewsTracker

Like the other personalized services, Excite includes options for including local weather, stock quotes, TV listings, and a comic strip or two. However, Excite adds a whole new level of Internet content retrieval with NewsTracker. NewsTracker is well hidden in Excite's site although it deserves far more prominence. Currently it is only available from within Excite Live!. Thus, to get access to the news requires going through a set-up process first.

Rather than focusing solely on a newswire like Reuters, NewsTracker searches a couple of hundred online magazines for specific topics. These are publications such as National Review, Business Week, Popular Science, and the Washington Post, that have some online content on their Web sites. The content on these sites can include selected articles from the print publications as well as original online content. It does not include all such periodical Web sites. It only includes recent articles from these, not information from the archives that may be available on these sites.

As a current awareness tool, NewsTracker expands greatly on the coverage available from the brief Reuters stories. It goes beyond traditional news sources to include an eclectic mix of free online magazine content. While certainly not a comprehensive tool, this is a promising new approach to current awareness using free Internet resources. It is also an untapped direction for future growth. Imagine an index such as NewsTracker that would search recent and archived articles on the Web sites of print publications. While I know of no such tool available yet, Excite's NewsTracker demonstrates the possibilities.

DIRECTORIES

Another natural addition for these budding online services is directory service: yellow page, white page, email, and company contact information. There have been many competitors in this area on the Net, with frequent mergers and name changes. While these freely available directory services have limitations and some percentage of inaccurate data, they are frequently used and requested resources. When loading or linking to one of these directory databases, the Internet search company usually arranges to make the pages look as if they were providing the information content. Look closely at the fine print on the bottom of the screen for the actual data source.

Yahoo!'s Yellow Pages utilize Lookup USA's database of business listings. Infoseek chose to partner with Big Yellow on its Yellow Pages. Lycos recently announced an agreement with GTE for use of its SuperPages. Rather than choose one database exclusively, Excite's Yellow Pages section features a form with access to the Bigbook database, but it also provides links to other yellow page database providers.

The white pages, or personal phone number and address databases, are handled in a similar manner. Yahoo! depends on the Four11 database. Infoseek credits both Four11 and Big Yellow. Lycos' People Find uses information content from ProCD delivered by InfoSpace. Excite features InfoSpace but also links to other databases. On the email address directory side, InfoSpace also delivers the database for Excite and Lycos. Yahoo! and Infoseek again rely on Four11.

Beyond these three standard directories, the Internet search services are expanding their offering to include other directory databases. Yahoo! points to its own listings to provide a very incomplete directory of personal home pages. Infoseek counters with WhoWhere?'s database of personal home pages, which is also far from comprehensive. The search engines themselves are still far more effective at finding an individual's home page.

Infoseek offers several other potentially useful directories. It has a government phone numbers database, derived from InfoSpace, with scripted choices by agency and location. This can be used as a local blue pages directory. In addition, Infoseek offers a company home page directory from WhoWhere?, area codes and country codes from Americom, and the AT&T toll-free directory. In addition, it links to a wide variety of international phone directories.

REFERENCE

The success of adding current news and directory services to their Internet search services has inspired these companies to expand even further. The next major area of growth is in offering additional basic reference sources. On the very basic level, these reference tools include dictionaries and currency exchange rate servers. Excite includes the directories and maps under its Excite Reference category, along with a dictionary page and a shareware directory.

The dictionary page sends the query to the Hypertext Websters Interface which does not specify which Webster's dictionary or the date of the source. The page also links to other sources for dictionaries. The shareware page features the searchable collection at Shareware.com, but it also links to other sources for shareware.

Infoseek features a wide variety of reference sources under its Smart Info section, including Bank and Market Rates, Currency Exchange, Webster's Dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, Bartlett's Quotations, and more. Lycos has a Pictures and Sounds database for searching for Internet-accessible images, multimedia files, and audio clips.

another type of reference source appearing on the Internet search engines' sites is the corporate directory, which offers more detailed information than that available from the yellow pages. At the most basic level, they offer stock quotes. Infoseek uses Quote.com, while Lycos' Stock Find features quotes from PC Quote and business news from News Alert, Inc. Yahoo! relies on TIBCO for its stock quotes. At a more detailed level, Infoseek has added a Company Profiles section. This database from CompanyLink includes over 45,000 public and private companies. Information displayed includes industry and ownership information with more detailed information available from CompanyLink. However, most of the detailed information is only available to CompanyLink subscribers, which is a fee service.

Lycos takes this model a step further. Partnering with Dun & Bradstreet, Lycos features Companies Online. Covering over 60,000 public and private companies, CompaniesOnline delivers DUNS number, parent company, annual sales, number of employees, industry, Web address, and ownership structure. All of that information is available for free. But for those seeking even more information, CompaniesOnline offers online ordering of full D&B Background Reports for $20.

This welding of the commercial online industry with the growing Internet search industry utilizes the successful Internet strategy of offering some substantive information content for free in exchange for advertising the availability of more detailed information products for a fee.

MAPS

In the hypertext realm of the Web, reference sources can be tied to the output from related databases. Local street maps are one example of this trend. Vicinity Corporation's databases of street maps, the mapping service used by Yahoo!, can be a direct follow-up search to the Yahoo! Yellow Pages. Look up a bookstore in the yellow page directory and Yahoo! provides an option for seeing the business's location on a street map. In addition, the map database even offers driving directions to get to that location. Choose the Drive It option, and the Vicinity database will attempt to find the fastest or the shortest way between the two addresses you select.

Lycos and Infoseek also use Vicinity's databases of street maps and driving directions, but Infoseek does not have a direct link from its yellow page service. Also, be sure to note that both the street maps and the driving directions may not be reliable. At least the samples I checked had missing streets and strange suggestions for driving routes.

Many of the Internet search services are using the same source for information content, such as Reuters for news and Vicinity for maps, as they compete in their quest for ever greater numbers of users. With all of this database expansion and duplication of databases between Internet search engines, which of these are of most interest to the information professional?

For browsing recent news, the wide variety of sources in Lycos' Top News makes that an interesting read. For personalized newspages, Excite Live! with its NewsTracker service is worth watching. For directories, maps, and driving directions, any will do, but don't consider the information reliable. Infoseek stands out for its extensive listings on its Smart Info page. Watch for additional growth there. And the Lycos and D&B partnership may well pave the way for the Internet search service to grow as online content delivery companies.

Expect frequent and rapid changes, as the companies try to find unique offerings to set them apart from the others. While the growth trend should continue with the addition of new general interest resources, some may begin to offer more specialized or fee-based databases. While standard online databases such as ERIC, Inspec, or PROMT may not migrate to these new online services, full-text magazine sources, product databases, and popular-interest reference tools may. So even if you have a favorite search engine, be sure to check out the other database offerings from the Internet search services.

Communications to the author should be addressed to Greg R. Notess, Montana State University Libraries, Bozeman, MT 59717-0332; 406/994-6563; greg@notess.com ; http://www.notess.com.