Internal Revenus Service/AltaVista

[Nick Arnett]

At 08:05 AM 4/22/97 -0700, Laura B. Cohen wrote:

>I see the problem here. But your search was not a good one, and indicative
>of the common mistakes people make when they go to search engines and
>don't take advantage of the available syntax. 

I think that's a bit of devil's advocate position.  The problem isn't that
it's a bad search -- after all, if a library patron asked for information
about the IRS that way, it would be perfectly reasonable -- it's the
stupidity of search software.  Better search software recognizes phrases and
filters out "word spam" more effectively.

AltaVista certainly is state-of-the-art in terms of its size, but it is a
bit below the state-of-the-art in search accuracy.  I hope no one assumes
that this is anything other than a trade-off.  There are more accurate
search tools that would handle such a query better.  Of course, even the
best search tools still make significant errors in accuracy.

Nick

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Verity Inc. -- Connecting People with Information

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