subject: Making Most Out of the World Wide Web [print this page] Making Most Out of the World Wide Web Making Most Out of the World Wide Web
The Internet has become so large, and so fast that sophisticated search engines are just scratching the surface of the Web's vast information reservoir, according to a new study released just recently. The Web is being presented by search engines such as AltaVista, Yahoo, and Google dot com but according to a 41 page research paper from a South Dakota company responsible for developing a new Internet software it is 500 times bigger.
There are times when people find it hard to get the necessary information they need and this is due to the hidden information coves. There are a lot of complaints nowadays when it comes to search engines that you can easily compare them with the weather. With regard to the uncharted territory of the Internet's World Wide Web sector, this has long been known as the invisible Web.
This particular Sioux Falls start up company describes the terrain as the deep Web to distinguish it from the surface information captured by Internet search engines. You could say that it is no longer an invisible Web. Considering what they are doing, the general manager of the company said that this was the cool bit of it all. What the researchers said was that these underutilized outposts of cyberspace represented a substantial chunk of the Internet but this new company was the only one that explored the Web's back roads extensively.
There was a new software deployed within the last six months estimating the number of documents stored on the Web to be 550 billion. Combined, Internet search engines index about 1 billion pages. It was mid 1994 and one of the first Web engines, lycos, was able to index around 54,000 pages. Even if search engines have come a long way since 1994 they are not able to index more pages due to the increase in information added to databases by universities, corporations, and government agencies.
Technology that identifies static pages as compared to dynamic information stored in databases is what search engines rely on. Making more queries is the key if you want to obtain specific information for a search engine will only guide you to a home site that houses a huge database.
According to the company, the software they developed named lexibot is a solution. When it comes to this all that is necessary is one search request and you can expect it to obtain information from databases off of the Internet after it searches the various pages indexed by traditional search engines. For a software like this one, executives say that it is not for everybody. For one thing, the software costs $89 after a free 30 day trial. For another, a lexibot search isn't fast. Considering simple searches, it will take 10 to 25 minutes to complete while complex requests can take as much as 90 minutes per search.
This will not be the right tool for grandma to use if she wants to locate chocolate chip cookie or carrot cake recipes over the Internet. From the privately held company came about the expectation for lexibot to become popular in the academic and scientific circles. It is possible for the software to become too overpowering but even so there were Internet veterans who still found the company's research to be rather fascinating.
Since the World Wide Web is getting bigger and bigger then there is definitely a need for specialized search engines. A centralized approach intended to be used like this isn't going to be successful. Taking note of their breakthrough, the greatest challenge for the company is in showing this to the entire world.
