Spring Break
Search engines, data algorithms improve
Technophile
By: Kevin Lynch
Issue date: 10/15/04 Section: Sci-Tech
Originally published: 10/15/04 at 12:37 AM EST
Last update: 1/7/05 at 1:24 PM EST
Originally published: 10/15/04 at 12:37 AM EST
Last update: 1/7/05 at 1:24 PM EST
However, there has not been much activity in the way of search engine technology since the appearance of Google. All of the other great and unstoppable search engines have long since been forgotten, or at the very least have dragged from the top. So what is it that makes Google so great?
I have been using Google since its inception in late 1998, a time when Yahoo! still controlled the boards. However, within a short time, Google managed to rise to the top, using its tactics of surprise and innovation. Unlike all of the other flashy search engines, filled to the brim with animated ads, Google opted for a cleaner, much more user-friendly interface. Without distractions or long load times, Google used text almost exclusively, even for Google AdWords, text based ads which are usually relevant to the queried search. Over the years, Google has expanded a great deal since its humble beginnings, offering everything from advanced image searching to searching through thousands of mail order catalogs or even shopping for the best price online through Froogle. What's a search engine without indexed sites, though? Google's index now spans over 3.8 billion documents, including information stored in standard webpages, Microsoft Word Document (DOC) files, Adobe Portable Document (PDF) files and more.
To gain an edge over Google's competitor, Yahoo!, user-friendly features were added to their repertoire. Google News, a searchable compilation of all the latest breaking news, was created for users to easily stay on top of current events and get more than one view of the story. Google's latest creation, GMail, is a friendly webmail service offering 1000 megabytes of data storage and an extremely intuitive interface. But what's with all of these gimmicks? Sure, they are great additions to the already powerful search engine, but doesn't Google have any more ways to make searching, the foundation of their empire, better and more accurate?
One way in which Google has improved methods of searching is by inclusion of Google Sets. These sets are groups of related words. For example, a set search of the words "Gentoo," "Debian" and "Mandrake" predicts the related words "SuSE," "Slackware," "Red Hat" and many other Linux distributions and related topics. This search tool is very useful for finding related topics which a user might not have considered. Though this idea is not promoted by Google, as it is still being improved, other search engines have implemented it. Clusty, a new search engine which was officially launched as a beta service at the end of September, uses the same concept as sets, or clusters, as Clusty calls them. The purpose of Clusty is not to search pages quickly, but to add value to the information that has been gathered, which is exactly what Clusty does. Clusty groups everything and anything into clusters of data, whether it is by a news topic, such as the presidential election, or a web search of Nobel Laureates, everything is filtered into topics and clustered. In addition to the almost basic search and nearly standard news search, Clusty takes categories one step further and includes customizable tabs to search the Wikipedia Encyclopedia, browse through blogs, or peruse the latest gossip from all of the major entertainment sites, clustered by topic, naturally.
I have been using Google since its inception in late 1998, a time when Yahoo! still controlled the boards. However, within a short time, Google managed to rise to the top, using its tactics of surprise and innovation. Unlike all of the other flashy search engines, filled to the brim with animated ads, Google opted for a cleaner, much more user-friendly interface. Without distractions or long load times, Google used text almost exclusively, even for Google AdWords, text based ads which are usually relevant to the queried search. Over the years, Google has expanded a great deal since its humble beginnings, offering everything from advanced image searching to searching through thousands of mail order catalogs or even shopping for the best price online through Froogle. What's a search engine without indexed sites, though? Google's index now spans over 3.8 billion documents, including information stored in standard webpages, Microsoft Word Document (DOC) files, Adobe Portable Document (PDF) files and more.
To gain an edge over Google's competitor, Yahoo!, user-friendly features were added to their repertoire. Google News, a searchable compilation of all the latest breaking news, was created for users to easily stay on top of current events and get more than one view of the story. Google's latest creation, GMail, is a friendly webmail service offering 1000 megabytes of data storage and an extremely intuitive interface. But what's with all of these gimmicks? Sure, they are great additions to the already powerful search engine, but doesn't Google have any more ways to make searching, the foundation of their empire, better and more accurate?
One way in which Google has improved methods of searching is by inclusion of Google Sets. These sets are groups of related words. For example, a set search of the words "Gentoo," "Debian" and "Mandrake" predicts the related words "SuSE," "Slackware," "Red Hat" and many other Linux distributions and related topics. This search tool is very useful for finding related topics which a user might not have considered. Though this idea is not promoted by Google, as it is still being improved, other search engines have implemented it. Clusty, a new search engine which was officially launched as a beta service at the end of September, uses the same concept as sets, or clusters, as Clusty calls them. The purpose of Clusty is not to search pages quickly, but to add value to the information that has been gathered, which is exactly what Clusty does. Clusty groups everything and anything into clusters of data, whether it is by a news topic, such as the presidential election, or a web search of Nobel Laureates, everything is filtered into topics and clustered. In addition to the almost basic search and nearly standard news search, Clusty takes categories one step further and includes customizable tabs to search the Wikipedia Encyclopedia, browse through blogs, or peruse the latest gossip from all of the major entertainment sites, clustered by topic, naturally.
