Shenehon Online: Search Engines
By: Scot A. Torkelson
Search Engines are not always the same. Each search service approaches the way it goes about finding a query very differently. You should also be aware that at the present time, there are vastly more Web sites than the search services are able to access.
In fact, at present, only 1_5 or less of the Web (at 800 million pages and counting) is accessible from the most common search engines: Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite, Alta Vista, or Hot Bot, to name a few.
Yahoo!'s methodology is a registration and review by employees and results in among the lowest penetration of Web sites at 7.5% (only Excite and Lycos are lower in the United States), though the pages accessed by Yahoo! tend to be of higher quality.
Search engines like Alta Vista, Excite, snap.com, etc., search the Web for meta tags, those sites with information about the page, as well as registration with the service. However, the structure of each services search through the Web yields different hits, resulting in access which ranges from 8% to 16% of Web pages currently available.
Finally, these services tend to steer patrons to sites which pay fees to the search service and may not represent the best hits for your search. Therefore, you do not necessarily receive an unbiased search in any event.
A new Web service called "All The Web" has been recently formed whose penetration into Internet Web pages is currently above 50%, having a database of 400 million pages. The service claims to be up to 100% of Web pages on the Internet by year-end. Currently, this service will provide the most comprehensive listing of hits and also offers many ways to enter your query for the most successful search. We therefore strongly recommend adding this service to your search services list.
Happy Hunting!
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