The Extreme Searcher's Guide to Web Search Engines: A Handbook for the Serious Searcher (2nd edition)

Citation

Joseph, A. (2005), "The Extreme Searcher's Guide to Web Search Engines: A Handbook for the Serious Searcher (2nd edition)", Library Review, Vol. 54 No. 6, pp. 389-390. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530510605548

This book is intended for web searchers, particularly those who would like to stretch the limits of search engines. It analyses web search systems, describing various elements of their functionality. The author has achieved his intention to reflect the concept, aim and content of the book in its long but clear title. This book helps the reader in using web search engines to their full potential by providing a better understanding of their basic structure, and by describing the main strengths and weaknesses of each. The author also packages some tips, tricks and techniques that can contribute to more effective searching.

The author starts with a brief history of search engine technology and the evolution of different web based search engines. He also gives a brief description of different components of a search system and how they are put together. The comparison chart at the beginning of this book is very useful and lists different features of eight popular search engines. With the understanding of where search engines come from and how they are put together, the author provides a detailed understanding of searching features provided by each search engine. After looking at the more common options/features in a general level, the author takes eight powerful search engines (AltaVista, Excite, Fast Search, Google, HotBot, Lycos, Northern light, and Yahoo!) and describes them individually.

From chapters 3 to 10, the author starts with the main strengths and weaknesses of each engine and extends with the description of features available, as provided at the home page of each. Some of the common features are a family filter, language options, media searches (images, audio, and video), news links, portals and personalisation features. He continues with advanced search techniques such as Boolean, field and phrase searching, case sensitivity, truncation and so forth, supported by an engine. He also describes briefly the technology behind these engines. Chapters are organised with the same headings and sub headings throughout which helps the reader to make comparisons between different engines.

Towards the end, the author describes some Meta search systems to search multiple engines simultaneously. Five major Meta search engines (Dogpile, ixquick, MetaCrawler, ProFusion, Search.com) are selected and compared, in terms of total engines searched, waiting time permitted, limits on number of records and the arrangement of output. The author also gives a brief glimpse about client meta search programs (BullsEye, Copernic) where a program on your computer serves as an intelligent agent to search multiple engines. The author concludes with a brief description of different sites that provide web searching news and some tips to choose a search engine depending on user need.

By providing a clear picture about different functionalities of eight major popular search engines, the book helps the reader to use these engines more efficiently. Even though the book is intended for a “serious searcher”, the non‐technical language of description is promising for naïve users. It doesn’t require any technical background to understand this book; but it requires an understanding of terrain and equipment. If you are looking for the technical details behind the web search engines, this is not the book for you. But if you are looking to improve your search results by better understanding web search engines; this is a perfect choice.