[WEB4LIB] A bit about search engines, was Strange Altavista

[Even Flood]

Hanan!

At 20:51 17.11.99 +0200, Hanan Cohen wrote:

>It's funny how people who give seminars learn the wrong lessons from
>their own experience.
>
>Quit using Alatavista. That's what I say. 
>Use Google. 
>Be patriotic, use Alltheweb, a Norwegian and excellent search site.
>
>Good luck
>


Well, those search sites have their good points, but also
bad ones. They are very limitied in search options, for
example neither Google nor Alltheweb have truncation
(unless they have changed the last weeks), nor do they
have possibilities of field searching in URL and domain.
Especially truncation is a pet subject of mine, I find
it incredibly useful and give low marks to engines that
omits it.

All in all, AltaVista offers the best choice in search
options. In my seminars I usually give special attention
to my three favourites, AltaVista, Google and NorthernLight.
AltaVista for search options, Google for linking and 
ranking the results and NorthernLight for the special
collection they have in addition to the web and for the
sorting of results into folders which on some searches
I have done really gave extraordinary results. 
One search I did in Nlight was for "baroque music"
and the result was sorted into  seperate folders for each
of the composers.  How do they *do* that?

Even


Even Flood,  Senior Research Librarian               
RBT/Norwegian DIANE Center, 
University Library of Trondheim, 
N 7491 Trondheim, Norway. 
Phone: +47 73 59 51 62, Fax +47 73 59 60 97
even.flood at ub.ntnu.no, http://www.ub.ntnu.no/diane/
<*>
"Come, and take choice of all my library, and so  beguile thy sorrow."
				(Shakespeare)