[Web4lib] Google limit of 1,000 results

[Richard Wiggins]

I think this thread is important. 
 I think for serious researchers it's probably more helpful and more useful 
for Lexis-Nexis to punt than for Google to do the best it can at the top of 
the hit list. 
 This involves the myth of the exhaustive search. Suppose you click on every 
link in the hit list from a 1000 item Google search. Have you covered the 
world? No, you have not. You've covered the part of the world that Google's 
algorithms choose to present to you.
 The hit list is not an exhaustive list of "the" answers.
 /rich
 

 On 7/12/05, Karen Coyle <kcoyle at kcoyle.net> wrote: 
> 
> Another interesting issue, which may not apply to Google but does to
> some other databases: when the search is cut off at 1,000 documents,
> WHICH 1,000 documents are in the result set? The most recent by date?
> Last in-first out? Is order applied after the results are retrieved? (So
> it looks like you've got the records in publication date order, but you
> don't have all of the documents with the publication dates in the result
> set)?
> 
> kc
> 
> Jenne Heise wrote:
> 
> >
> >> It's intriguing that Attila the Search Engine makes that cut-off so
> >> low. I'm
> >> assuming we're one of the few groups that care about this (though as
> >> groups
> >> go, we should be). One wonders how much of the Google world is smoke
> >> and
> >> mirrors (or two twelve-year-olds in a garage).
> >>
> > Does this phrase sound familiar?
> > "*This search has been interrupted because it will return more than
> > 1,000 documents."*
> > Lexis-Nexis.
> > I'm beginning to see a trend:
> > - missing data
> > - wierd search and relevance algorigthms
> > - database coverage subject to the Schroedinger uncertainty principle
> > - drives librarians nuts
> > - users become addicted and have to be forcibly changed over to
> > another database
> > - costs a lot of money and requires a lot of training... oh, wait,
> > that's just Lexis/Nexis...
> >
> > -- Jenne Heise
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Web4lib at webjunction.org
> > http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/
> >
> >
> 
> --
> -----------------------------------
> Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
> kcoyle at kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
> ph.: 510-540-7596
> fx.: 510-848-3913
> mo.: 510-435-8234
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