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Search
Questions to ask
You have data; you want somebody to be able to search and extract information from that data. Here are the questions to ask in evaluating a search engine for your data:
- Is a table of contents of the entire collection available at a single click? (With WCT technology, the current selection is a link directly to the table of contents.)
- Does the search permit combinations of words using full Boolean logic?
- Does the search permit inexact phrases? (Any search engine worthy of the name can find exact phrases. When there are words in between the words that searchers want, it is technically more challenging.)
- Is the search engine capable of precision search?
- Is the relevance ranking meaningful?
Each of the above is a standard feature of Words Close Together technology. Here are some more:
Simplicity
The basis search assumes the searcher wants all the words that are input in the search box. Most people familiar with Internet pages, input boxes, buttons, and mouse clicks are at home with basic search in under a minute. The list of hits resulting from the search is similarly straight forward. A single click lets the user see full detail of any hit, with the desired terms highlighted in color. Reading context before or after the hit requires also only a single click.
Power
Do you want parts of words? Then conventional wild cards are permitted -- asterisk for multiple characters, question mark for a single character. Want a word and a phrase? Put the phrase portion within double quotes. See the indexed helps for more detail on these features. Advanced search offers more power than one could ever realistically use -- up to ten sets each of 15 terms, each with simple but powerful Boolean options.
Search that locks out manipulation and gaming
There is a full blown industry trying to psyche out how the popular search engines rank the relevance of the records found in a search. People game the system, trying an incredible range of tricks to gain an advantage. The whole emphasis is to get your web site's information to show as near as possible to the top of the search result list. Part of the problem, of course, is that the relevance ranking formulae are proprietary secrets belonging to the providers of the various search engines.
You cannot manipulate something that is public, simple, and verifiable by a ten year old child. Suppose record "A" has all the desired words within 12 words of each other, record "B" has the desired words within 7 words of each other. Record "B" goes higher in the list. End of discussion.
For a quick course on key issues in search
The "Research Quality" pages provide a quick overview of issues in search.
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| words close together.com | The "Research Quality" Search Engine by Marpex, Inc. | ||||