FW: [WEB4LIB] Searching for AIDS: Google strikes again [Hardin MD Notes]

[Gimon, Charles A]

Nice article...but on the other hand, I'm not sure I'd always want a search 
engine to be making assumptions about what I want. I hope raw text searching

remains an option alongside what you describe here.

(As an aside, in my life away from work, I host a website on Indonesian 
history. I would be perturbed if search engines suddenly decided that 
searches that mention "Java" were automatically about the programming 
language.)

--Charles Gimon
  Web Coordinator
  Minneapolis Public Library

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Rumsey [mailto:rumsey at blue.weeg.uiowa.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2000 9:07 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Searching for AIDS: Google strikes again [Hardin MD
Notes]


The "dumb computer" behind most search engines is nowhere more in evidence 
than when doing a search for an ambiguous word such as AIDS. Any reasonably 
aware human being realizes that a search for "aids" is likely looking for 
the disease AIDS. But to a search engine, all occurrences of the word are 
given equal weight. So can a search engine be smart enough to "know" that a 
search for "aids" is almost certain to be looking for the disease? Until 
recently, probably not. But new developments are bringing improvements.

For more see:
Searching for AIDS: Google strikes again
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/notes6.html


*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	
Eric Rumsey, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences
University of Iowa, Iowa City IA 52242
<eric-rumsey at uiowa.edu>
319-335-9875 (voice), 319-335-9897 (fax)
Hardin Meta Directory of Internet Health Sources - Kudos -
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/news.html