[WEB4LIB] Norway, Diabetes and the new AltaVista.

[Even Flood]

At 17:07 19.05.00 +1200, Alastair Smith, Director MLIS
>There are a couple of possible factors:
>- Alta Vista times out searches at busy periods, and often gives 
>inconsistent boolean results because of this.
>- some searches on domain names produce spurious results e.g. link:no will 
>pick up any occurrences of .no in file names, eg .../myfile.no/ (however I 
>don't think this applies to domain:)
>
I do not think this is the problem. Allthough the numbers
might differ from day to day, their relative size does not differ
significantly. AltaVista is still confusing.
And domain:no in AltaVista picks up only Norwegian
domaines.

Even

>
>-----Original Message-----
>From:	even.flood [SMTP:even.flood at ub.ntnu.no]
>Sent:	Thursday, May 18, 2000 8:45 PM
>To:	web4lib
>Subject:	FW: [WEB4LIB] Norway, Diabetes and the new AltaVista.
>
>Folks!
>
>Some time ago I sent a report and a question about
>AltaVista and the confusing results I got for searching after
>Norwegian diabetes information. Well, I tried out the new AltaVista
>and the numbers still do not make sense. On a large scale 
>there is some pattern, but on a small scale, it is a mess. Check in
>particular the number of sites I got for searching
>for Diabetes, limited to both Norwegian sites and Norwegian
>Language. Results of today, May 18th 2000.
>
>
>-----------------
>Simple search:
>Diabetes: 748 285
>Diabetes  in Norwegian: 141
>+Diabetes +domain:no in Norwegian:  2181
>+Diabetes  +domain:no 127 
>
>----------------
>Advanced search - all pages:
>Diabetes: 932 351
>Diabetes and Domain:no in Norwegian: 1,607
>Diabetes and Domain:no: 2,147 
>Diabetes in Norwegian: 1800 
>
>
>At least the latter are internally consistent, but not with the simple search.
>However, If I add sort by "diabetes" and mark for one result pr website, 
>the numbers are *excactly* the same as for the simple search. Unfortunately,
>that  also makes little sense, especially  the numbers for the
>double restricion result to both Norwegian language and Norwegian sites.
>
>BTW - "Raging" gives the same results as the simple search.
>
>I sure do miss the good old days when at least we knew what 
>was going on and what we were getting.
>
>Still confused, but at least all this work keeps my
>activity up and bloodsugar down!
>
>Even
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Even Flood,  Senior Academic 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
>http://www.ub.ntnu.no/diane/
>"Come, and take choice of all my library, and so  beguile thy sorrow."
>				(Shakespeare) 
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
http://www.ub.ntnu.no/diane/
"Come, and take choice of all my library, and so  beguile thy sorrow."
				(Shakespeare)