Sex & the Search Engine

[Greg Notess]

	In terms of AltaVista's performance, I assume the original search of the
single word "superbowl" was done in the Advanced search mode, since that is
the only way to include the date qualifier that Joseph mentioned of
limiting to sites after 21/Dec/97. When using AltaVista advanced search
mode, there is no relevancy ranking done UNLESS a search term is put in the
Ranking box. Thus, the irrelevant sites that may have only included a
single term can come up first. If you do the same search and put
"superbowl" in the Ranking box, the results are more relevant.
	As to the Free Nude Celebs site, note that AltaVista gives the date for
that page as 22-Dec-97. If you go to that page and ask for page
information, the page has been updated on Jan. 19. (It also has a meta
http-equiv="refresh" tag which points to another page, although neither
page currently contains the word "superbowl".) So Nick is most likely
correct that the content of the page has changed since AltaVista last
indexed it.
	There are plenty of problems with the Web search engines, but they work
best at finding unique words, phrases, or combinations of terms rather than
broad subjects. A directory like Yahoo! or even search engines with a
subject directory component work far better for subject searches such as
the Super Bowl or Windows 98. Try either topic in AltaVista's Browse by
Subject (which uses the Looksmart directory) and the results are much more
on target.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + +  +    +        +                +         
+  Greg R. Notess, Reference Librarian       	406-994-6563 
+  Montana State University-Bozeman Library    	406-994-2851 fax
+  Bozeman, MT 59717-3320                      	align at montana.edu
+            Search Engine Showdown at http://imt.net/~notess/search/
+ + + + + +


At 10:02 AM 1/23/98 -0800, Alis Whitt wrote:
>
. . .

>I tried the search you described below.  I can't even locate "superbowl" 
>in the HTML code of some of these sites.  The third "relevant" site in
>AltaVista (free nude celebs at http://onewebstreet.com/total/index.html)
>does not have "superbowl" in the code -- anywhere. Up to now, I've at
>least been able to provide users with a logical explanation for why they
>get sex when they ask for superbowl (meta tags, white words on a white
>background, etc.).  What's up here? 
>
>On Fri, 23 Jan 1998 cadieux at librarybook.com wrote:
>
>> Jan. 23, 1998
>> 
>> This morning I attempted a standard AltaVista search on "superbowl."
>> I queried for hits from 21/Dec/97 and later.
>> 
>> For "superbowl" none of the top 5 sites had anything significant to do with
>> this year's superbowl.  Two of the top five hits were sites offering
>> subscriptions to nude picture archives.