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Copyright © 1996 by The University of Missouri-St. Louis
This search tool relies upon submissions from users. Keywords used to search ALIWEB must deal with the terminology chosen by the author of the site.
"Web Search Tool Features":Searches newsgroups; Implied "or"; can specify fields; truncates with "*"; uses " " for adjacency; no proximity searching.
6/24/1996: Education related sites only. Best Education Sites Today (B.E.S.T.) uses advertisers to support an outstanding site. User documentation is sparse, but for educators looking for education sites, this is a good first stop. Compare favorably to Yahoo's subject hierarchies.
6/26/1996: One of the smaller databases of World Wide Web URLs, this site from the Centre Universitaire d'Informatique of the University of Geneva has little documentation and is more useful for searching only when you've exhausted the major sites. The database appears to be built by user submissions. Sophisticated searching is difficult.
Courtois: Poor documentation and no sample searches; manual construction and submission of URL's; 40,000 URL's; indexes URL, title, annotation; no boolean searching; no field specifying; truncation allowed; no rankings; updated daily; supported by Lynx; numerous mirror sites.
6/26/1996: In addition to having one of the larger indexes of Web pages (approaching 2 million), excite also indexes over 10,000 Usenet Newsgroups. Internet World's May 1996 issue rated excite as one of the best search engines at staying current ("Search Engine Showdown" by Gus Venditto, p. 82). The display of results is one of the best giving a percentage rating for relevance. Documentation is excellent and easy to find. excite is a first stop for most searching.
"Web Search Tool Features": Covers newsgroups; uses boolean "and" "or" "not"; cannot specify fields; no truncation; no adjacency; no proximity.
Venditto: Full-text of 1.5 million web pages; includes newsgroups; offers web site directories by category; reviews web sites.
6/26/1996: A confusing search form, but excellent results format. Documentation is difficult to find. URL's are compiled from submissions for inclusion. Worth utilizing (once again) as a secondary search tool. Includes an extensive list of subjects useful for serendipitous browsing. EXTREMELY USEFUL is Galaxy's implementation of Hytelnet, a listing of telnet sites. Hytelnet is the best tool for finding library catalogs on the Internet.
6/26/1996: The Harvest system uses WAIS, Inc.'s WAISserver (version 2.1.1) for indexing and searching. Harvest claims to have indexed "approximately 110,000 WWW home pages." Help documentation is readily available, including example queries and user statistics.
Courtois: Good documentation with sample searches; automated (spider) updating, manual updating, and submission of URL's accepted; 5-6 million URL's indexed; indexes cover URL's, references, title headings, 20 lines of text, 100 "weighty" words; accepts boolean "and" "or" searching; no adjacent terms; ranked relevancy displays; supports Lynx access.
6/26/1996: A first tier commercial search site including newsgroups, web pages, and email addresses. Extremely well designed and documented. Doesn't allow complex searches.
Venditto: 1 million Web pages; newsgroups indexed; directory of categorized Web sites; reviews Web sites.
"Web Search Tool Features": Implied "or" searching; adjacency and proximity searching; newsgroups indexed; email addresses indexed.
6/26/1996: A search engine prototype, soon to be a commercial venture, out of the University of California, Berkeley. Inktomi looks like a prototype. Purports to be extremely fast. Worth using as a second choice at this time.
"Web Search Tool Features": Strips common endings.
Enter up to 10 words as your query. Inktomi will return the documents that contain those words, ranked by how many of the words each document contains, and by their relative importance. Use "+berkeley" to indicate that the word berkeley must be in the document; use "-berkeley" to indicate that it must not.
6/26/1996: Huge database (over 50 million URLs) on a traditionally overloaded server (i.e., has been excruciatingly slow in the past during peak use periods). Simple interface, hard to find documentation. Still, a first tier search site if you can get in. Best for unique, hard to find items.
Courtois: Good help with sample searches; automated (spider) updating and accepts submissions; indexes URL, URL references, title, 20 lines of text, 100 "weighty" words; updated weekly; supports Lynx; "best to use during off-peak times".
Venditto: Indexes ftp and gopher sites; newsgroups NOT indexed; directory of Web sites by category; reviews web sites.
"Web Search Tool Features": Implied "or"; uses "and", "or", "not" operators; search terms treated as a word stem.
6/26/1996: "Magellan is an online guide to the Internet that includes original editorial content, a directory of rated and reviewed Internet sites, a vast database of yet-to-be-reviewed sites, and a powerful search engine that helps you find what you're looking for. Browse Magellan topics or perform a search and a list of sites that matches your area of interest will appear instantly. Magellan includes Web sites, FTP and gopher servers, newsgroups, and Telnet sessions." (from the Magellan HELP file)
7/11/1996: The OCLC corporation's index to Internet resources utilizes the same techniques and vocabulary for cataloging Internet resources as are used in libraries. The free trial expires at the end of July, 1996. If you can't connect directly, see these sample screens.
6/26/1996:
Courtois: Automated (spider) construction, accepts submissions; 1 million pages, 14 million hyperlinks; indexes URL's and full text of pages; supports "and" "or" "not" operators; field limiting available; results ranked by relevancy; weekly update; Lynx support.
Venditto: Indexes 1.5 million pages; includes ftp and gopher sites, NO newsgroups.
"Web Search Tool Features": Indexes newsgroups; uses "and" "or" "not" operators; uses "NEAR" proximity operator.
6/26/1996: The ".mil" in the URL means a "Military" site. Imagine people in the military designing a Web search engine and you get this site.
6/26/1996:
Courtois: Sample searches included; automated (spider) updating and accepts submissions; full text of documents indexed; 150,000 documents indexed; "and" and "or" operators recognized; endings of words stripped; results ranked by relevancy; 6 week update cycle; supports Lynx.
Venditto: Indexes full text of 515,000 Web pages; includes ftp and gopher sites.
"Web Search Tool Features": No newsgroups indexed; uses "and" "or" and "not" operators; uses "NEAR" for proximity searching.
6/26/1996:
Courtois: Includes sample searches; automated (spider) updating and accepts submissions; 3 million URL's indexed; supports "and" and "or" operators; supports Lynx.
Venditto: 3 million URL's indexed; includes gopher sites.
6/26/1996: This first tier search site's strength lies primarily in its subject organization scheme which is excellent for broad searches. The subject trees are outstanding for finding classes of Internet objects (e.g., organizations, sites by geography, etc.) Searching Yahoo will often yield results, but is not exceptional compared to many of the other first tier search sites.
Courtois: Sample searches available; automatic (spider) construction and accepts submissions; 66,000 entries; uses "and" and "or" operators; updated daily; supports Lynx.
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