Known-Item Searching on the World Wide Web

With the explosion of the World Wide Web, numerous search engines have proliferated online, claiming to be the best, fastest, or most accurate. Though each product is slightly different from the others in its presentation and search architecture, what all are providing is keyword searching of the We...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Internet reference services quarterly 1997-04, Vol.2 (1), p.5-14
Main Author: Tiedman, Christine DeZelar
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Comparative Analysis
Comparative Testing
Information Retrieval
Information Seeking
Internet search
Known item searching
Known-itams searching
Online information retrieval
Online Searching
Ranking
Relevance (Information Retrieval)
Search Engines
User surveys
Web Sites
World Wide Web
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Summary:With the explosion of the World Wide Web, numerous search engines have proliferated online, claiming to be the best, fastest, or most accurate. Though each product is slightly different from the others in its presentation and search architecture, what all are providing is keyword searching of the Web's millions of pages. However, there are circumstances, just like in a library catalog, where an individual may want to perform a known-item search rather than a keyword search. The purpose of this paper was to discover whether known-item searches are possible with some of the Web's most popular search engines, and if the results retrieved using such a search would be satisfactory to a user. The author tested and compared four major Web search engines, using the most sophisticated search techniques available. Thirty-nine sites were selected and searched by title, and ranked according to the relevance and order of the displayed results.
ISSN:1087-5301
1540-4749
DOI:10.1300/J136v02n01_02