As an alternative to the 'commercial online country club', list subscribers
might care to look at the Cooperative Online Resource Catalog (CORC)
research project from OCLC which is investigating a co-operative approach to
the selection and organisation of web resources. Details can be found at:
http://www.oclc.org/oclc/research/projects/corc/index.htm
and
http://www.oclc.org/oclc/press/980928.htm
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Simon Day, Product Specialist
OCLC Europe, the Middle East & Africa
7th Floor, Tricorn House Tel. +44 121 456 4656
51-53 Hagley Road Fax. +44 121 456 4680
Birmingham, B16 8TP Email [log in to unmask]
United Kingdom Web http://www.oclc.org/europe
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask] [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 1999 10:17 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Cc: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Search engines cover about 10% of web
>
> **************************************
> Message forwarded by
> Anne L Barker
> c/o DILS, University of Wales Aberystwyth
> email: [log in to unmask]
> **************************************
>
> ********************************************************************
> NUA INTERNET SURVEYS NUA INTERNET SURVEYS NUA INTERNET SURVEYS
> Weekly free email on what's new in surveys on the Internet
> By Nua Email: [log in to unmask] Web: http://www.nua.ie/surveys/
> ********************************************************************
> July 13th 1999 Published By: Nua Limited Volume 4 No. 27
> ********************************************************************
> <snip>
>
> ********************************************************************
> EDITORIAL - Members Only - Sorcha Ni hEilidhe
> <http://www.nua.ie/surveys/analysis/weekly_editorial.html>
> ********************************************************************
>
> Perhaps this is common knowledge but I personally find it intriguing
> that the biggest search engines on the Web still only index
> less than one tenth of the Web. I have a fundamental problem with the
> perpetuation of the virtual myth that the Web is growing at such a rate
> that search engines cannot come up with ways to track the growth.
>
> The long and short of it is that search engines can't be bothered
> indexing the other 90 percent of the Web for the simple reason that
> it's not commercially viable for them to do so. That's a fair enough
> reason but it
>
> The sites most likely to be found on a search engine or a directory are
> US-based, commercial and highly trafficked. These are the very sites
> who spend millions on their marketing budgets and are least in need of
> the additional endorsement of being listed on a search engine.
>
> If a huge organisation like Yahoo! can only get it together to index
> 7.4 percent of the Web then isn't' it time we stopped referring to it
> as a search engine and start thinking of it as a members only
> commercial online country club. If you've got the cash, you're in.
>
> In fairness to Yahoo!, they never call themselves a search engine or
> directory and in their press material they describe what they do
> carefully: "Yahoo! contains organized information on tens of thousands
> of computers linked to the Web."
> <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/misc/history.html>.
>
> Two scientists from the NEC Research Institute in Princeton carried out
> a study on the Net's loudest search engines and found that not only do
> they not index the best part of the Net but they are most likely to
> index commercial over educational, US over European and popular over
> relatively unknown.
>
> For the full article please see:
> <http://www.nua.ie/surveys/analysis/weekly_editorial.html>
>
> <snip>
> ********************************************************************
> SEARCH TOOLS:
> Archives: <http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=FS&cat_id=29>
> ********************************************************************
>
> CNN Interactive: Search Engines Only Index One Sixth of Web
>
> The extent of the Internet which is indexed by search engines is
> diminishing rapidly according to a new study by NEC Research Institute
> in Princeton, New Jersey. The 1998 study found that one third of the
> Web was covered by search engines, now only one sixth of the Web is
> covered.
>
> The study found that Northern Light had the largest proportion of the
> Web indexed however this was found to be only 16 percent of the Web.
> Last year Hotbot were the largest search engine and they had 34 percent
> of the Net covered.
>
> In a study of 11 search engines Northern Light was followed by Snap with
> 15.5 percent of the Web covered, Altavista also with 15.5 percent,
> Hotbot with 11.3 percent, Microsoft with 8 percent, Infoseek with 8
> percent, Google with 7.8 percent, Yahoo with 7.4 percent, Excite with
> 5.6 percent, Lycos with 2.5 percent and Euroseek with 2.2 percent.
>
> The study found that on average it takes a new site 6 months to be
> indexed on a search engine. The study suggested that the cost of
> maintaining ever larger databases was the reason why search engines had
> relatively low amounts of content indexed.
>
> According to Steve Lawrence and C. Lee Giles, authors of the study, 800
> million pages of the Web are now searchable. In 1997 that figure as 320
> million.
>
> <http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9907/08/search.engines.ap/>
>
>
> ********************************************************************
> <snip>
> This newsletter is copyright 1996 - 1999 Nua Ltd. Permission is given
> to reproduce this newsletter in any format pending full recognition
> of Nua Ltd. Nua do not accept responsibility for the accuracy of
> information contained in this newsletter. The content has been
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