Search engines - Handling of new URL & currency

[Eric Rumsey]

The URL for the Hardin Meta Directory was changed, with an automatic
redirect from the old URL to the new one, on Feb 10, 1998. In the last week
of so (approximately one month after launching the new URL), I've compared
different search engines to see how they've handled the change, and which
ones have picked it up. The search engines included, in the general order
of their success at picking up the new URL, are -
Excite, Hotbot, Infoseek, Lycos, Webcrawler, Alta Vista, and Northern Light.

To do the survey, I searched all search engines for -
+hardin +neurology
This should retrieve both the home page for the Hardin Meta Directory, and
the separate subject page for neurology. Some of the search engines found
the new URL for both of these, some found it for one, and some for neither.
Also, some returned both the old and new URLs for one or both pages.

The results are summarized below -

Excite
home page - new URL ; subject page - new URL

Hotbot
home page - new URL ; subject page - new URL

Infoseek
home page - old and newURL ; subject page - old URL

Lycos
home page -old and newURL ; subject page - old URL

Webcrawler
home page - new URL ; subject page -  doesn't find

AV
home page - old URL ; subject page - old URL

Northern Light
home page - doesn't find ; subject page - old URL

The URLs involved are:

Home page -
old - http://www.arcade.uiowa.edu/hardin-www/md.html
new - http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/

Subject page -
old - http://www.arcade.uiowa.edu/hardin-www/md-neuro.html
new - http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/neuro.html

*       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *
Eric Rumsey, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences
University of Iowa, Iowa City IA 52242
<eric-rumsey at uiowa.edu>
319-335-9875 (voice), 319-335-9897 (fax)
Hardin Meta Directory of Internet Health Sources
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md
Fortune Magazine, Jan 12, 1998, Medical Sites on the Web, #1 Starting Point
http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/digitalwatch/0112fil2.html