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Searching the world wide Web

Lawrence1, Giles

  • 1Computer Science, NEC Research Institute, 4 Independence Way, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA. E-mail: lawrence@research.nj.nec.com (S.L. ) or giles@research.nj.nec.com (C.L.G.).

Science (New York, N.Y.)
|April 16, 1998
PubMed
Summary

Major search engines offer limited coverage of the indexable Web. Combining six search engines found 3.5 times more documents than a single engine, revealing the vastness of the searchable internet.

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Area of Science:

  • Information Science
  • Computer Science
  • Web Archiving

Background:

  • The World Wide Web has grown exponentially, raising questions about search engine coverage.
  • Understanding the scope of major search engines is crucial for information retrieval.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To analyze the coverage and recency of major World Wide Web search engines.
  • To quantify the limitations of individual search engines and the benefits of combining results.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of search engine coverage and recency.
  • Comparison of results from six major World Wide Web search engines.
  • Estimation of the indexable Web size through overlap analysis.

Main Results:

  • No single search engine indexes more than approximately one-third of the indexable Web.
  • Coverage varied significantly across the six engines analyzed.
  • Combining results from six engines yielded 3.5 times more documents on average than a single engine.
  • An estimated lower bound of 320 million pages for the indexable Web was determined.

Conclusions:

  • Individual search engine coverage is highly limited.
  • Combining multiple search engines is essential for comprehensive web searching.
  • The indexable Web is substantially larger than any single engine's coverage suggests.

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