[Web4lib] search engine inconsistencies report page

[Richard Wiggins]

Felicia,

The site you reference is by Greg R. Notess <greg at notess.com>, a notable 
commentator on search engines in general and Google in particular. 

Unfortunately the comparison article that you cite was last updated in July 
2003, and a couple of years is an eternity in Web time. The search engines 
reviewed are AltaVista (now virtually irrelevant in the search pantheon, 
after many ownership changes, and now run stealthily as a Yahoo property), 
Hotbot, Northern Light (whom I once claimed was the future of rock n' roll 
when it comes to full text search of serious literature) -- and Google.

I bet Google's algorithms have changed greatly in the intervening years, as 
have everyone else's. One of Greg's complaints back then was: 

* 
> 
> SITE LIMIT FAILURE: A search such as site:www.google.com google<http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=site:www.google.com+google&btnG=Google+Search&num=100>should only find pages at Google. Yet with the number of hits set to 100, 
> some records come up from adobe.com <http://adobe.com>, digits.com<http://digits.com>, 
> osdn.com <http://osdn.com>, and even washington.edu<http://washington.edu>. 
> 

*

I could not replicate this flaw just now. 
 Perhaps more to the point, right now we'd want to compare Google to today's 
competitors, Yahoo Search and MSN Search. (Yes, I know, some one will pop up 
and say Ask Jeeves is still a player.)
 Maybe Greg will propose a solution for updating his Inconsistencies report. 
We could all bombard him with our own observations. Or maybe hold a contest. 
Or ask a library science class to help? But, respectfully, I wouldn't cite 
the 2003 report as current reality...
 /rich





On 7/5/05, Felicia Mehl <felicia at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> There is an interesting page on different search engine inconsistencies 
at:
> http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/inconsistent.shtml
> 
> You can also report specific problems you encounter to the page owner.
> 
> Felicia Mehl
> Master's candidate, Library and Information Science
> University of Washington
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