FIRST GENERATION TOOLS:
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
The comparative analysis of the coverage of search engines could be an excellent informetric work, and although it is a hot topic in the web, true mathematical analysis are very scarce.
The very best analysis is done by Danny Sullivan in his Search Engine Watch, a large and updated review of all aspects related with search engines, including coverage, popularity, main characteristics, commercial issues and other items.
We select the following pages as the most interesting ones of this very valuable site:
• Guides to major search engines
searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/index.html
An updated description of the big ones• Measuring Link Popularity
searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/popularity.html
A preliminary approach to a method to calculate "sitations"• Search Engine Resources
searchenginewatch.com/resources/index.html
A large webliography about the topic• The Search Engine Report
searchenginewatch.com/sereport/index.html
Easy to subscribe, this bulletin distributed by email is very useful
Also very interesting is Search Engine Showdown (new URL) by Greg R. Notess, updated also very frequently, and with quantitative facts for supporting information.
New services are appearing around search topics, including
| Traffick | www.quickbrowse.com/press/traffickcom | Impressive collection of articles, notes and reviews. Updates are frequent and the quality of the contents and comments very high. Critical reviews are common. |
| ResearchBuzz | www.researchbuzz.com | Mainly news about search engines, updated daily |
| Abondance | www.abondance.com | French, with a global coverage |
| SearchIQ | www.search.com | Not news, but reviews of search engines, directories and metasearchers with evaluation of features and rankings. |
<<< Under development >>>
PRINTED ARTICLES AVAILABLE ON THE WEB
• The Internet Search-Off. Searcher, Feb. 1998.
• Search engines: The next generation. Network World Fusion, Oct. 20, 1997.
• Chakrabarti, S. Focused crawling: a new approach to topic-specific Web resource discovery. Proc. 8th Int. World Wide Web Conf. (1999) pp. 545-562.
• Stanley, Tracey. Alta Vista vs. Lycos, 1996.
• Lawrence, S. & Lee, G.C. How big is the Web? How much of the Web do the search engines index?. Science, v. 280, pp.98-100, 1998.
• Sullivan, D. Power Searching For Anyone, Oct. 2001.
• Nobles, Robin. The Future Of Search Engine Optimizing: Theme Engines.
• Hearst, Marti A.Next Generation Web Search: Setting Our Sites. IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin, Sept. 2000.
• Leighton, H. Vernon. Performance of Four World Wide Web (WWW) Index Services: Infoseek, Lycos, Webcrawler and WWWWorm, June 1996.
• Rumsey, Eric. Searching for directory sites: Google - Yahoo! questions. Hardin MD Notes, October 2000.
REFERENCE GUIDESOne of the most comprehensive and updated reference guides is the series of pages maintained by the University of Albany Libraries, especially those devoted to discerning the capabilities of each engine:
| Searching
the World Wide Web Tools and resources for locating Information by Charlotte Jenkins |
The most updated of the comparative analysis sites, although somewhat descriptive. It covers different kinds of search engines and specialized ones. | |
| How to Choose a Search Engine or Directory | ||
| Second Generation Searching on the Web | ||
| General
Internet Resource Finding Tools: A Review and List of Those Used to Build INFOMINE, |
March 1996 | |
| Librarians'
Index to the Internet Lots of useful links about searching. |
||
| Literature
about search services by Traugott Koch |
January, 1996 | |
| Precision
among World Wide Web Search Services (Search Engines): Alta Vista,
Excite, Hotbot, Infoseek, Lycos By H. Vernon Leighton and Dr. Jaideep Srivastava |
June 1997 | |
| Reviews
of Search Engines from the Search Page |
June 1996 | |
| Search
the Net: Top Internet Searching Resources Reviewed by Tracy Marks |
February, 1997; updated October, 1997 |
|
| Signal
Detection Analysis of WWW Search Engines by Carsten Schlichting & Erik Nilsen, Lewis & Clark College |
1996 | |
| Tips
on Popular Search Engines by Karen Campbell |
March 1997 | |
| Top
keyword Resources of the Web by John December |
November, 1996 | |
| Search
Engine Reference List by Rowan Brownlee |
April 1996 | |
| Search
Engines for the World Wide Web: A Comparative Study and Evaluation
Methodology by Heting Chu and Marilyn Rosenthal |
||
| Understanding
WWW Search Tools Jian Liu |
September 1995, February 1996 |
|
| UCB
Library Internet Search Tool Details |
November 1995; updated September 1996 | This list includes information on the size of each search engine's database. |
| World
Wide Web Searching Tools, An Evaluation |
Ian Winship, 1995 | This evaluation compares four search engines, Lycos, WebCrawler, WWWWorm, and Harvest, and two Subject Trees with search engines, Yahoo and EiNet Galaxy |
| Complete Guide to Searching the Net | September 2004 | |
| Understanding and Comparing Web Search Tools | February 1999 | |
| Understanding
the Word Wide Web |
December 2004 | |
| Second Generation Searching on the Web | October 2004 | |
| Searching
the Internet: Recommended Sites and Search Techniques |
October 2004 | |
| Literature
about search services |
May 1998 | |
| Multi-search Engines - a comparison by Phil Bradley | February 2003 | |
| Precision among World Wide Web Search Services (Search Engines): Alta Vista, Excite, Hotbot, Infoseek, Lycos by H. Vernon Leighton and Jaideep Srivastava | August 1997 |
