On Fri, 2 Feb 2001 14:07:38 -0000 Brian Kelly <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The change at Leeds is interesting as I'd assumed that externally hosted
> search engines would be used by small colleges, departments or by projects,
> especially those with limited technical expertise. Leeds Univ doesn't fit
> this profile. The search engines is available at
> http://www.leeds.ac.uk/search/.
>
> The service seems very quick, and benefits from the functionality of Google.
> However there are network charging issues, reliance on a third party,
> loss of control over indexing policy, etc.
>
> Any thought on this?
Here are three questions which I would ask when evaluating a search
engine:
1. Does it index multiple document types - not just txt and html but also
word,excel,pdf etc? I've had a bit of a read at the Google documentation but so
far I haven't been able to find any reference to this topic.
2 Does it generate query frequency ? Site maintainers want to get inside the
heads of their visitors to see what they're looking for from their sites. Good
for both planning content and determining the metainformation to be included in
pages.
3. How easy is it to set up restrained searches?
There are more questions than these of course but for us at Queen's we would want a Yes
on all three for starters.
Regards
Majella
----------------------
Majella McCarron
Information Services
The Queen's University of Belfast
University Rd, Belfast BT7 1NN
Tel: +44+(0)28 90273178
http://www.qub.ac.uk/
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