Re: Target: meta search engine

[Gordon Riley <Gordon_Riley@MERCERSBURG.EDU>]

All the search engines and meta engines use different technology strategies=
, most of it proprietary and secret.  Different sites have used various =
strategies to make their sites come to the top of search results, with =
varying degrees of success at different sites.  I have seen sites that =
manage to put your search term into porn stories every fourth of fifth =
word to increase the percentage of term/page so that the results ranking =
of their site is high.

I think the better you understand Search Engine Technology, the more you =
know that for instructional purposes, Yahoo is the place to go, because =
they have the most human involvement.  Most school questions can be solved =
just with Yahoo, but when you need something more powerful, use Webcrawler,=
 because their older search program is too dumb to be fooled, then use the =
button at the bottom of the Webcrawler screen to do the search on the more =
powerful partner Excite.  This should be enough to solve 99% of your web =
search queries.  If you still want more power, then go to Hotbot, which =
has a link to Lycos.

I have tried many meta-search sites and seen the results of other people's =
searches, and my opinion is to not even waste your time with them.  If you =
want this kind of search, get WebFerret software, it is light years ahead =
of meta-search sites.

Gordon Riley
Technical Services Librarian
Mercersburg Academy
Mercersburg, PA
Gordon_riley@mercersburg.edu
The opinions expressed are my own!

"Unity.  It doesn't always mean agree, it doesn't always mean the same.
But it sure doesn't mean burnin' books and brains and Jews in Jesus' =
name."=20
Holly Near in the song Unity

>>> Jean Anne Lowis <jalowis@HOME.COM> 05/29 10:44 PM >>>
This meta search engine xquick - http://ixquick.com/  was mentioned
int the
 [LIIWEEK] May 29, 2000  email notice. I tried it out with a search
one of the students was doing today - Japanese internment.  I was
really impressed with the speed and the quality of the first few
sites; However... after 1- 5 star site, 3 -4 star sites, 2 - 3 star
sites, of the next 16-2 star sites, 3 (2 at the beginning) were
horribly descriptive porno sites. I did the same search on other
meta engines and this did not occur, and I must say that rarely
lately have I come across porno sites in meta engine searches on
legit school topics.
Question - does this occur more often with certain search engines? I
am wondering why this one picked them up and others didn't.  Maybe
it searches some sort of meta index of key words that the others
don't?

Too bad - it looked promising.

Jean Anne Lowis

--
Jean Anne Lowis
Teacher-Librarian; Dept. Head
Frances Kelsey Secondary
Mill Bay, BC, Canada

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