Web Search Engines "Made Simple"

[Nick Arnett]

At 09:05 AM 11/6/97 -0800, Bob Duncan wrote:

>Two quick examples: 
>A search on Infoseek using the query
>	+date +rape [both terms required]
>produced 134 hits, while the query
>	"date rape" [date rape as a phrase]
>produced 1375 hits. Unless I was asleep during IR101, there cannot be more
>occurrences of a phrase than of the component parts of that phrase.

I don't think InfoSeek treats "date rape" as a simple phrase.  I believe
they're doing some sort of free text parsing in attempt to figure out the
subject the user is seeking.

I would strongly agree that no search engine, including ours, makes much of
anything "simple" unless you know exactly what you want and how it differs
from the other documents in the collection.

Nick

Product Manager, Knowledge Applications
Verity Inc. -- Connecting People with Information

Phone: 408-542-2164               Fax: 408-541-1600
Home office: 408-733-7613         narnett at verity.com
http://www.verity.com