The Extreme Searcher’s Guide to Web Search Engines: A Handbook for the Serious Searcher (2nd ed.)

Citation

Beheshti, J. (2003), "The Extreme Searcher’s Guide to Web Search Engines: A Handbook for the Serious Searcher (2nd ed.)", Online Information Review, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 62-63. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520310462617

Since its inception, the Web has continuously grown and evolved in spectacular fashion. More than 20 general search engines and hundreds of specialised retrieval systems have been developed to cope with the ever‐increasing number of sites created by institutions and individuals. Randolph Hock focuses on eight popular engines to demonstrate in a practical way the features, capabilities and limitations of these systems for searching the Web.

The book includes 13 chapters, the first of which covers the basic operations, features and components of information retrieval systems developed for the Web. The first four pages are devoted to a short history of the search engines. While historical events may not be of particular interest to some readers, a more in‐depth coverage of personalities influential in creating search engines might have been beneficial for a better understanding of the reasons behind the past and current developments. In Chapter 2, information retrieval operations are discussed and search features of various popular engines are juxtaposed in a table. This table is perhaps one of the most important contributions of The Extreme Searcher’s Guide, allowing the reader quickly to examine the search capabilities of the eight engines.

The eight search engines – AltaVista, Excite, Fast Search, Google, HotBot, Lycos, Northern Light and Yahoo! – are covered in the next chapters. The last of these is included in the book because, according to the author, “with its integration of results from the large Google database, it also can legitimately be categorized as a search engine”. Each chapter begins with an overview of one of the engines and continues with an examination of the home page, behind‐the‐scenes operations, advanced features, results pages, directories and other options. At the beginning of each chapter Hock presents the strengths and weaknesses in tabular form, which summarises the features and limitations of the engine.

Chapter 11 covers meta‐search engines such as Dogpile, MetaCrawler, and ProFusion, followed by a very brief chapter on “Other search engines and keeping up”. The latter chapter is somewhat disappointing, since none of the other search engines are discussed or mentioned, even though hundreds of retrieval systems are used every day by millions of users. AskJeeves, for instance, is a different type of engine using a quasi‐natural language in a question‐answer format. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, AskJeeves was the fifth most used search engine in June 2002 and hence an important retrieval mechanism for home and office users.

The concluding chapter is also very brief, slightly more than two pages, advising the reader to use more than one search engine, to examine the first 20 records in the results set, and to use the advanced features of the search engines. The book’s Web site is designed to keep the reader abreast of the latest development.

The Extreme Searcher’s Guide to Web Search Engines is a practical handbook aimed at novices who want or need to conduct more complex searches than casual searches for leisure and entertainment materials. Students in library and information studies programmes can also use the book as a brief introduction to Web search engines.