Searching for AIDS: Consider Alta Vista, InfoSeek

[Eric Rumsey]

Thanks a lot for the comments from list members. I do feel a bit red-faced 
about forgetting to search for AIDS in upper-case -- As Susan Colowick 
points out, Alta Vista does have the useful feature of distinguishing upper 
case, and it does in fact produce all relevant hits in the first 100 hits 
when the search is for "AIDS." InfoSeek also has this feature. I searched 
for "AIDS" (upper case) in all 11 search engines used in the article, and 
Alta Vista and InfoSeek are the only ones that distinguish upper case. 
Again, my apologies for my glaring oversight -- A revised version of the 
article will be up in the next couple of days.

About the other comments on meaning-based search engines ....
 >The new "meaning-based" search engines like Simpli and Oingo are designed for
 >such ambiguous searching.
 >http://simpli.com/
 >http://www.oingo.com/
 >
These really don't work well for AIDS:
-Simpli: Of the first 10 hits, only 2 are on AIDS the disease. There's no 
indication of the total number of hits.
-Oingo: The "Web Sites" search is taken directly from Alta Vista, as it 
says. The "Oingo categories" section is from Open Directory.

 >> -----Original Message-----
 >> From: Eric Rumsey [mailto:rumsey at blue.weeg.uiowa.edu]
 >> Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2000 7:05 AM
 >> To: Multiple recipients of list
 >> Subject: [WEB4LIB] Searching for AIDS: Google strikes again [Hardin MD
 >> Notes]
 >>
 >>
 >> The "dumb computer" behind most search engines is nowhere
 >> more in evidence
 >> than when doing a search for an ambiguous word such as AIDS.
 >> Any reasonably
 >> aware human being realizes that a search for "aids" is likely
 >> looking for
 >> the disease AIDS. But to a search engine, all occurrences of
 >> the word are
 >> given equal weight. So can a search engine be smart enough to
 >> "know" that a
 >> search for "aids" is almost certain to be looking for the
 >> disease? Until
 >> recently, probably not. But new developments are bringing
 >> improvements.
 >>
 >> For more see:
 >> Searching for AIDS: Google strikes again
 >> http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/notes6.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 - Kudos -
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/news.html