September 14, 2004
Introduction to the Report:
With the impending Google IPO, and the huge amount of buzz created by the search engines in recent months, we at K-Praxis ran a series designed to give a complete round up of search engines. We now present this series formatted as a complete report. This report is aimed at understanding the phenomenon of search from the point of view of an information searcher / information consumer /knowledge worker. This report is intended to offer him/her glimpses of various facets of information search - including: search technology, search process, search engine usability, search results display, information crawling and indexing process.
Focus of this Report:
The main focus of this report is to cover search engines - although the report has several references to enterprise search technologies, the central theme of the report remains online search.
Areas Covered in the Report:
| Online Search, Search Technology and Search Algorithms, Search Engine Usability, Search Engine Users, Information Relevance Ranking, Search Results Clustering, Information Retrieval, Search Engines and Unstructured Data Management, Text Mining, Natural Language Processing, Enterprise Search, Paid Search, Paid Inclusion, Search Engine Displays, Search Interfaces, Paid Listings Vs Organic Listings, Contextual Advertising, Local Search, Internet Yellow Pages, Information Crawling, Information Indexing, Future of Search. |
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Index
1. Understanding users intention
- 1.1 User intention and search
1.2 User Intention Vis-à-vis Recent Search Engine User / Usability Surveys
1.3 Simple vs. Complex Queries
1.4 Complex Queries and Search Engines
2. Relevance Ranking of Results
- 2.1 Information Relevance Ranking
- Google
Teoma/AskJeeves:
Vivisimo
Yahoo/MSN
2.2 Information Relevance Ranking and Enterprise Search
2.3 Information Relevance Ranking: Issues
3. Search Interfaces and Information Display
- 3.1 Online Search Interfaces and Information Display
- List view
Title, Text Snippet or Summary
Other information about the URL
3.2 Visual Search and Search Engine Interfaces
3.3 Attempts at alternative Search Interfaces
3.4 Future of Interfaces
4. Paid Listings Vs Organic Listings
- 4.1 Paid Inclusion Controversy
4.2 Paid Inclusion vs. Algorithmic Search Results
- Argument for maintaining the purity of search results
Demarcating Paid Inclusion
Are organic listings really organic
4.3 Organic Vs Paid Listing, Shopping Sites and Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs)
5. Crawling and Indexing
- 5.1 Information Crawling and Indexing: Introduction
5.2 Online Information Indexes: Do Bigger Indexes Always Mean Better Indexes?
5.3 Innovations in Information Crawling and Indexing
6. The Road Ahead
- 6.1 The Future of Search and Search Engine Users
6.2 A March Towards Understanding User’s Intention
6.3 Relevance Ranking Of Search Results, and Paid Vs. Organic Listings
6.4 Possibilities in Search Interfaces and Information Display
6.5 Future of Information Crawling and Indexing
6.6 Future of Search: A Few Tangential Ideas