Web Search Engines "Made Simple"

[Dan Ream]

I too have had Linda's experience with repeated searches returning
different results over a brief period of time.

Does anyone here have a good explanation of this that you use with your
students/patrons/users when helping them with searches?

Humorous replies welcome, as well as serious!

--Dan Ream
  Head, Instruction & Outreach Services
  Virginia Commonwealth University Library
  Richmond, Virginia, USA



On Sun, 9 Nov 1997, Linda Absher wrote:

> 
> My two cents:
> 
> I recently did a search on AltaVista and came up with no *no* results; I
> was surprised since I've done the search before on AltaVista and came up
> with at least five items.  I hit the search button again and got the five;
> this made me curious so I hit the button again:  this time nine items were
> retrieved.
> 
> Scary....
> 
> LInda