Search engines -- Northern Light responses

[Chizuko Kawamoto]

I wasn't going to participate in this subject, but
reading Joyce Ward's response on relevancy
ranking, classification, and query interpretation
algorithms, I tried Northern Light Search to find
information for my staff.  I searched using (1) child
biting, then (2) +child +biting.  Both retrieved the
same number of postings, but they were so different
from each other.  Within the first query, the same
article was listed at least twice (more, if you include
different sites)--one as 91 % relevancy, the other 74
% relevancy.  How does this happen?

Chizuko Kawamoto
ckawamoto at cdpr.ca.gov