[WEB4LIB] Even stranger AltaVista result

[Even Flood]

Folks!

Thanks for all the info on AltaVista searching. To make the whole
thing even weirder, I redid the third search, 
but *dropped* the + in front of diabetes - the search was now
diabetes  +domain:no limited to Norwegian language.
Result: 77 pages found. (while +diabetes +domain:no limited
to Norwegian language was 1498.)

I think I will quit giving seminars.

One more question - how does AltaVista decide which language?
Is there some sort of automatic analysis and comparison to
frequently used words on the site from some sort of word list?
This was asked from one of the participants - at the time I just
wanted to step down and laugh hysterically.

Even



>>1) I search for +diabetes. Result: 1,044,090 pages found.
>>2) I search for +diabetes +domain:no to get results
>>from Norwegian servers. Result:95 pages found.  Not much, but some.
>>3) Then I limit further by keeping the search string, but limiting the
>>language to Norwegian. Result:  1498 pages found. 
>>??????
>>4) Finally, I drop the +domain:no and limit only to +diabetes in 
>>Norwegian language. Result: 92 pages found. 
>>???????
>>
>>Can anyone explain what is going on? I looked at the results under
>>3) and they all looked OK - in Norwegian and in domain:no. It seems
>>2) and 4) are badly reduced.
>
Even Flood,  Senior Research Librarian               
RBT/Norwegian DIANE Center, 
University Library of Trondheim, 
N 7491 Trondheim, Norway.
Phone: +47 73 59 51 62, Fax +47 73 59 60 97
even.flood at ub.ntnu.no
<*>
"Come, and take choice of all my library, and so  beguile thy sorrow."
				(Shakespeare)