Fiber Cut (Research on Search Engines)

[Bennett, David]

     My sincerest apologies to the list.  Our fiber-optic line was cut on 
Friday afternoon and has just been repaired.  If you sent me email, it 
probably bounced, and I'm terribly sorry.  If you would please resend the 
message, it should be okay (although lightening can strike twice, can't 
it?)

    I've received several interesting comments, but the most frequent 
question was: "Why not include Hotbot in the study?"   I hope to expand 
the study once all the bugs are worked out, and I would like to include 
Hotbot at that time.  I've never taken Hotbot seriously, maybe it's the 
name that turns me off, but I'm going to certainly take a second look.

     For this study, it is certainly hard to control all the variables.  
For now, I'm satisfied that the search is performed from the same machine 
with the same connection by the same person in the same hour.  There are 
plenty of variations that occur from machine to machine: loading images, 
processor speed, cache, time of day....the list goes on and on.  To ask 
volunteers to participate, though, I wanted to keep the requirements as 
simple as possible. 

     I forgot, for example, that people handle cookies differently.  If 
you keep the option to accept or decline a cookie, this will certainly 
affect response time.  There are lots of issues to consider and  while it 
may be difficult to measure the differences fairly, it is not impossible 
to come to some useful conclusions.

     Thanks for your help and your patience! 

>My Information Retrieval Class is doing a study on Internet Search 
Engines.  We are comparing some >of the major search engines in terms of 
currency, response time, and relevance.
>
>Our sample for response time is limited to Pittsburgh, PA...so I have a 
request.  Would you perform the >following search:
>
>    "ultimate website"    <---  Make sure you use the quotes...this 
forces the search to look for a phrase
>
>at:	http://www.altavista.com 
>	http://www.excite.com
>	http://www.infoseek.com
>	http://www.yahoo.com
>
>One *FREE* PittCom1997 T-Shirt awarded at random to one lucky 
participant.
>
> REPORTING SHEET
> Searches performed by:
> City, State, Country:
> Speed of Connection: 
> 
> ENGINE	  #of Seconds
> altavista 
> excite 
> infoseek 
> yahoo 

******************************************************
David Bennett  (bennett at robert-morris.edu)
Systems Support & Instruction Librarian
Robert Morris College Library
881 Narrows Run Road
Moon Township, PA  15108
(412) 262-8474
(412) 262-4049 fax
******************************************************