June, 2000
In this article:
1. Raging
2. metaeureka
3. Searchengines
4. YEP
5. Help
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Raging.com
http://www.Raging.com
AltaVista has launched a new pure-search search-engine which may satisfy all who dislike the corollary information, advertising and portal-like approach most search engines have derailed into.
Raging Search uses the same web page index as does AltaVista itself. However, expect that there could be variations when running the same searches in both places, especially for multiple word queries. Raging Search is designed to be a sort of test bed for improvements that may migrate over to the main AltaVista site. Consequently, a different ranking algorithm may be in use, or Raging Search may process the query in a different manner.
As for the web page index, AltaVista has expanded it to 350 million pages, which the company says are the best on the web.
"There's definitely a demand for pure search, and it will be interesting to see if other services mimic the move."
(Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Watch:
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/sereport/ 00/05-altavista.html)
Raging.com also relies on several technologies to sort through that index and find exactly the pages requested. To judge whether a Web page is relevant to your query, Raging Search combines different factors to find the best matches, including text relevance and link analysis.
Text relevance searches every Web page for exactly the words you enter. Many factors enter into text relevance, such as how important the words are on the page, how many times the words appear, where on the page they appear, and how many other pages contain those words.
Link analysis uses the many connections from one page to another to rank the quality and/or usefulness of each page. In other words, if many Web pages are linking to a page X, then page X is considered a high-quality page. In this way, Raging Search technology uses the judgment of actual people across the Web to improve our rankings.
Special/Innovative functionalities
Search by Language
Search the Web in up to 25 different languages at the same time. By choosing one or more languages from a list provided on the customization page, Raging will only return Web page results written in the languages selected. To receive results in any language, just leave all the boxes unchecked.
Translate On/Off
By turning on Raging's Translate feature, and every result, in one of the above languages, will have a "Translate" link that will allow you to see the results in the language of your choice.
I did find this little extra convenience step extremely useful and powerful. At times it is just the pairing of two, apparently minor features that makes a product/service much better than the competition.
Complete Page Information
You can choose whether to have a compact result, which will display only the most basic data for each Web page Raging finds, or a more detailed result block info.
By turning Complete Page Information on, you will get the Last Modified date, HTML size (in Kilobytes), and language for each page in the results.
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metaeureka
http://www.metaeureka.com
This meta-engine (capable of searching simultaneously through several other Search Engines) strikes me for its simplicity and minimalist approach. As a SE (Search Engine) it really does what it is supposed to do.
Fast response, easy to read and scan pages, reference info for every page found, reference to the SE where it has been found. The user can also customize the number of results per screen and ask to receive results with no description.
You can perceive the "bliss" of simplicity by searching for something that it is not in its database (Giggi) and looking at the simplicity of the response taking place on screen.
The home page contains only three links: Help, Contact and Add URL.
After parsing results (removing duplicates, sorting on relevancy) METAEUREKA gives you the best results of the five most important web search engines: (AltaVista, Google, Lycos, AlltheWeb and Yahoo).
If you are not satisfied with the results you can click on "Give more results" to produce the next results list.
Key features and benefits I have found at METAEUREKA?
1. It gives up to 50/100 results per page.
2. NO graphics on search pages
3. FAST loading
4. NO latest or breaking news
5. You can add your site to above mentioned (except Yahoo) search engines with just one click.
(MetaEureka allows for open contribution by the users through an "Add a URL" link on his home page. Though I have tried it and have received a successful response, I could not validate or find the site submitted through MetaEureka, neither on ME nor on the other SEs. Maybe I will have to wait.)
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Searchengines.com
http://www.Searchengines.com
Beta service
Gateway to search engines, directories and reference sites
This is a fresh "chicca", as we say in Italian, and I am sure many of you will bookmark this one.
It is indeed one of those resources that was long overdue, and though there have been similar attempts to do the same, none had come so close to be a professional and useful service as this looks to become.
This a clearinghouse hub for all search engines topic-wide and world-wide. Access categories are very customer driven providing the search engines grouped according to the following criteria:
a) Regions of the world
UK Ireland
West Europe
East Europe
Africa and Middle East
Asia and Pacific Ocean
US and Canada
Latin - South America and the Caribbean Sports and Recreation
b) Topics
Arts and Entertainment
Computers and Technology
Science and Health
Government and Law
Social Science and Humanities
Life
c) Search Engines types
Meta search engines
General directories
General search engines
Reference
Kids
News
Search engines info
Rule of seven applied here. Each category of access is subdivided into seven subareas to simplify and ease visual access and usability.
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YEP.com
http://www.YEP.com
Search Engine Ranking Sites by Quality and Popularity.
http://www.yep.com/
Yep.com is among a new generation of Web portals that bring you unique search results, original content, and useful applications.
Yep.com is among the first search engines to strongly base its results on Quality and/or Popularity. As part of their system, YEP allows surfers to vote on sites within their unique database. To weigh in with your vote, it is enough to just click on any site found through the search engine at Yep.com.
How does YEP determine quality?
YEP does not have editors, review boards or examiners. Instead YEP uses the collective consciousness of the Internet community, by tracking and following the surfing habits of all the users of their complimentary software technology called Hitbox.
Being a live traffic log analyzer adopted by many hundreds of thousands of sites, the company is able to data-mine such data and to derive from it relevant information on pattern behaviors and audience preferences.
Hitbox is a traffic analyzer for any website, which you can test and adopt yourself for free. It is available at:
http://resources.hitbox.com/
What I indeed find most interesting for our need to look at how to improve communication and visibility through the use of SEs is to better understand and analyze the evaluation criteria the SEs are adopting to rank the websites they find.
Quality Details include 10 criteria;
1. vote ratio
Vote Ratio
The vote ratio displays the average of surfer votes. Your opinion counts - make sure to vote for the sites you surf from yep.com
2. bookmark ratio
The number of Bookmarks shows a "Portal" factor of a site.
When people find a site important or interesting enough for repeated visits, they often bookmark it for quicker and easier accessibility.
3. speed ratio
The speed ratio is based on how fast a Web site responds to a query. Also factored is the reload ratio (Reloads/Impressions).
A high reload ratio usually indicates low bandwidth output on the server side, as surfers become impatient and hit the "Reload" button to see if the server will respond quicker.
4. time spent ratio
The Time Spent ratio shows how visitors spend their time on a specific Web site as compared to the average Web site.
5. update frequency
The Update Frequency average indicates if a site is updated more or less frequently than the average web site.
6. same day ratio
When surfers keep coming back to a site multiple times daily, it is an indication of interesting or constantly changing content. The same day ratio reflects the number of daily repeat visits as compared to the global same-day average.
7. prime time ratio
The prime time ratio favors Web sites that receive higher than average traffic during "Prime Time" television viewing hours (6pm to 9pm).
8. high end media ratio
Innovative and graphically rich content will attract visitors with High-End systems: better monitors, 4.0 and 5.0 browsers. Sites rated highly here generally provide rich multimedia content to high-end system users.
9. search engine referral ratio
A site with a lot of visitors coming from search engines has a high search referral ratio - indicating a strong presence on the major portals of the Internet.
10.repeat visitor information
Visits shows you the "Keep 'em Coming Back" Quality of a site. This ratio reflects loyal repeat visitors.
Popularity is based on the average number of daily page visits.
These criteria are determined by surfer data gathered by WebSideStory's HitBOX technology. Sites without a HitBOX can also be listed at Yep.com, but will not have the quality and traffic data available.
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Search Engines Help?
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/
Go to the http://www.searchenginewatch.com/ to find out how to search and many things about search engines.
Find out which are the best present-day tools and techniques to stay up-to-date without moving a finger.
