information overload

New search engines tackle information overload

YOU need some informa tion. You need it fast.

You know it must be on the World Wide Web.

But to find it, you’ll probably waste a lot of time struggling with an Internet search engine - and therein lies the problem.

As most Internet users know, tradition al, run-of-the-mill search engines such as Alta Vista (www.altavista.com) Lycos (www.lycos.com) and Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) often offer up too much information, too many links, and are down right frustrating in their thoroughness.

What’s more, most of the original search engines are transforming themselves into so-called “portals” where the emphasis is as much on offering news, stock quotes, free email and other attractions as it is on

improving search efficiency.

That’s where a handful of new Web based search tools comes in. They attempt to cut through the clutter and help you pin point the information you’re looking for.

And best of all, they quite often work as advertised.

Case in point: Ask Jeeves. Recognising that part of the difficulty users have in nar rowing their searches lies in the arcane command-switches that give the best results, the search tool Ask Jeeves (www.ask.com) breaks new ground by doing much of the dirty work itself.

With Ask Jeeves, users simply ask a nat ural-language question. Ask Jeeves then parses the question, submits it in the best format to the leading search engines, and returns links that are usually remarkably relevant.

For instance, the question “What is the capital of Alaska?” took Ask Jeeves only about 30 seconds to analyse and send to the six most popular search engines, when fin ished, Ask Jeeves provides the links to the search engines that found “matches” for the query.

Usually, the links provided relevant information. The first link provided by Excite, for example, was “Juneau, Alaska the Capital City Home Page” - exactly what

the question asked for. The first link that Ask Jeeves found from the search engine Alta Vista was equally on target: “The Capital City Profile - Juneau, Alaska”.

Ask Jeeves provides a simple drop down list box from which you can choose the matches found by each search engine it queries, so that you can visit a Web Site directly from Ask Jeeves without ever going to the search engine that found the link.

Ask Jeeves’ natural language query function and its reliance on already well established search engines makes it a per fect tool for everyone from busy executives to school children overwhelmed by old style search tools.

One downside: currently, Ask Jeeves is an English-only search tool, but Ask Jeeves will spell-check your query before submit ting it. And don’t expect to find everything with Ask Jeeves. Searches for specific information rather than general queries will yield the best results.

Almost as impressive as Ask Jeeves is

Google! (www.google.com), the brainchild

of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, two gradu ate students from Stanford University in California.

Google! attempts to bring to your atten tion the Web sites you are most likely look ing for through its unique Pageßank tech nology. Three years in the making, Pageßank works by firs indexing as much as it can and then ranking Web sites based upon how often they are pointed to by other Web pages.

So, for example, a simple search for “Microsoft” will quickly yield Microsoft’s home page, since it is often across refer enced by other home pages on the Internet.

The creators of Google! are so confident of their technology that they even provide an “I Feel Lucky” rather than the standard “Search” button to go directly to that site.

Similar in theory to Google! is Direct Hit (www.directhit.com). Direct Hit is based on the assumption that what you are looking for on the Internet others have already found. This search tool, therefore, concentrates on ranking popular Web sites,

while relying on today’s standard search engines for the queries themselves.

If you type “Compaq” into the Direct Hit search field, the first links presented will be to Compaq computer’s home page, since that’s the page that most Web users have visited after searching for the term “Compaq”.

Search tools such as these can go some way toward allowing you to spend more time absorbing information than looking for it, and they are a welcome relief from today’s overcrowded Web portals, with

search features becoming increasingly

subordinated to glitz and advertisement.

Of course, these relatively little-known search tools may one day resemble big portals. But for now, we can enjoy them for their sheer simplicity and usefulness.

(Dpa) ■