Matrix, Search Engines: InfoSeek

The service is divided into 2 portions, InfoSeek Guide and InfoSeek Professional. The Guide provides limited free access to certain portions of the InfoSeek database. The Professional portion offers data from each of the services listed above, but is provided at a charge to registered users.

Key Links

• Free Search: http://guide.infoseek.com/
• Registered Users: http://professional.infoseek.com/

Organization

• InfoSeek is a strictly searchable Internet index.
  • The InfoSeek search engine is based on a custom software and database engine, written in Python (similar to Perl). To see a comparsion of search engine features, check out their Search Technology page.
  • Features and Limitations
    • The server supports Multiple Keywords, and can successfully resolve even free text query strings.
    • True Boolean searches are not supported, however keywords can be required or filtered by prefixing them with '+' or '-' character.
    • The server does not perform wildcard or pattern-matching searches.
    • By quoting or hyphenating words, the engine will treat them as a phrase. It will then search for documents where these words occur together and in that order.
    • Enclosing keywords in square brackets [<text>] will perform a Proximity Search, so that the words must occur together or just near each other in the full text.
    • Keywords are automatically stemmed to the relevant root word before performing the query.
  • Search results are sorted by match quality, but are limited to the top 100 hits (for demo searches) or the top 200 hits (for registered users).
  • Searches are performed on the filenames and fulltext of Web pages, Usenet articles, and so much more.
• Searching and registration require HTML Forms.
• The server contains documents from numerous sources, but does not focus or restrict its content to any particular subject area.

Administration

• Documents are located and indexed by automatic searching software, a custom Worm program, and by user registration of online documents.
• The server and search engine run on an 8 CPU SparcCenter, and additional support pages (help, etc) are located on a secondary server. My test searches over the Web database completed in less than 10 seconds (for both demo and registered interfaces), but the FAQ warns that UseNet searches may take up to 60 seconds.
• For registered users, the server collection boasts over 400,000 Web pages, recent Usenet posts, 80 computer periodicals, newswire services, Medline, movie reviews, and many more. The free guide interface only searches certain databases.
• Additional Services
  • Documents and services are explained in detail across abundant and well-written help pages and FAQ documents.
  • Important links are located at the top and bottom of each page, as quick navigational aids.
  • The server provides concise explanations for various search parameters and sample queries to try out.
  • Server Load Indicators
  • Users are encouraged to register Web pages with the search engine.
  • Search results include document title, sample text, match quality, document link and printed URL, and the file size of the returned document.