Internal Revenus Service/AltaVista

[Bill Crosbie]

At 10:19 AM 4/22/97 -0700, Nick Arnett wrote:
>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. 
>
>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

I think that it is important to realize that Alta-Vista did exactly what it
was supposed to do.  It behaved exactly the same as any other search engine
would have performed given the (wrong) data that it had to index with.  

Viewing the source code shows that the page creator placed "Internal revenue
service IRS" in the META CONTENT section of the document, using up most of
the 1024 bytes allocated to it by alta-vista.  The search engine relies on
this information being an accurate representation of what is available on
the web page.  The hidden text at the bottom of the page would have no
effect on Alta-Vista, although it may confuse older or less sophisticated
engines.  

The bottom line is that the search engines will work best when content
providers are honest about what is available on their servers.  If sex-shop
producers have to lure people to their sites from unrelated search terms
there must be less of a demand for the stuff than many folks would have us
believe.

Bill

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Always dream and shoot higher         |      Bill Crosbie
 than you know you can do.             |      Microcomputer Analyst
 Don't bother just to be better than   |      Chang Science Library
 your contemporaries or predecessors.  |      Rutgers University
 Try to be better than yourself.       |      New Brunswick, NJ USA
                                       |      crosbie at aesop.rutgers.edu
      ~~William Faulkner~~             |      908-932-0305 x114