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** Reply to note from Majella McCarron <[log in to unmask]> Mon, 5 Feb 2001 09:30:12 +0000 > 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. If it has drivers to read them :-) I believe M$ own whatever is called has drivers. Verity (whoever owns it or whoever it owns now) used to have PDF drivers. I thought HT-Dig had drivers. > > 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. You could probably extract this from your ordinary logs if it does not have its own logging and from there on you do your analysis. In a non-statistical manner: - Most people search for people :-) - Then most people search for anything that comes to their head thinking a local engine indexes all the web. - Then the search for pages which no longer exist or have been moved (ie. from results of 404 errors). > > 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. As a general comment commercial engines may have drivers to read proprietary file formats, but for example with M$, making every newer version of its files backward incompatible those who write drivers would have a non-stop job. Thus you must expect to pay appropriately. Wish you luck. Charles ============================================== Charles Christacopoulos, Secretary's Office, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN, Scotland, United Kingdom. Tel: +44+(0)1382-344891. Fax: +44+(0)1382-201604. http://somis.ais.dundee.ac.uk/ Scottish Search Maestro http://somis2.ais.dundee.ac.uk/