Analyzing Search Engines :: essays research papers

<div bolt="sub-title">1. Formulate five criteria for the evaluation of appear enginesTo effectively evaluate third different look for engines from the perspective of an modern web exploiter, the following criteria were formal1. Relevance and accuracy of assay results2. Search run3. Advanced search options4. Other services5. Site design and layoutMore information close to these criteria and how they were used is available below.2. Test trio search engines against your criteriaFor this evaluation, the following trine search engines were tested1. AltaVista - http//www.altavista.com/2. Google - http//www.google.com/ 3. DirectHit - http//www.directhit.com/<div style="sub-title">3. Explain your methodologyThe criteria outlined in Part 1 were r apieceed by considering the things that would be important to an advanced user. Of course, factors wish Relevance and zip argon critical to such a user (particularly in a work environment). The search options cr iteria is particularly important to advanced users who are after a specific page and do non want to waste time wading through results from a standard search. The other criteria are important to most users and mean that the search engines are more than useable and useful.The search results from the three test search engines (Part 2) were evaluate according the criteria, explained it more detail below.Criteria 1 - Relevance and Accuracy of ResultsThis criterion was to evaluate the gain of a particular search engine according to the accuracy of its results. I defined the relevance, according to personal standards, after browsing the pages in the results, for three separate search terms. The Relevance Percentage is calculated by numerate the number of relevant pages that appear in the first 20 search hits and then multiplying by 20 (for a percentage).Criteria 2 - Search SpeedThis criterion was to evaluate which of the test search engines returns results quicker. However, it is impo rtant to note that the speed test is both a test of the Internet connection to the aloof machine, as well as the time taken by the search engine to perform the search. Furthermore, tests of Internet speeds are very variable base on time of day, other internet traffic etc and are therefore of only limited accuracy. For this reason, no hard numbers were calculated (ie timed searches). Instead, I rated each search engine based on 5 searches per engine at the same time, same day. The possible Speed Ratings are as follows Excellent, Good, uglyCriteria 3 - Search OptionsThis criteria was to evaluate the search engines advanced search options.