[Web4lib] web site search engines

[William Denton]

On 22 September 2005, Bret Parker wrote:

: There are some nice fine-tuning features. It is used by reputable
: institutions, such as Johns Hopkins University. One of the aspects we
: particularly liked was that it was easy to set up and it can run on
: Linux, Solaris, or Windows. If someone has tried this out and finds that
: FREE is not accurate, please let me know.

It's free, but for a year. After that they don't know how much they'll
charge.  It might be free again, or it might be $5,000 USD.  That's an
important thing to consider.  It has good features, and the cost is
certainly attractive.  If one uses the XML output then it wouldn't be hard
to move to another search engine in a year, if need be, and adapt programs
to use its XML output, which will probably be quite similar.

I did a test comparing Ultraseek to the Google Mini, Ultraseek allows much
more hacking and customization.  The Mini is great for organizations that
just want to plug something into the wall and have a good basic search.

Bill
-- 
William Denton : Toronto, Canada : www.miskatonic.org : www.frbr.org