Searches on 2 Internet Search Engines

The fact that proprietary search engines, or sets of computer programs that function as instruments of and portals to online information retrieval (Search, 2001), are of variable quality has long been acknowledged by information-industry experts (Salpeter, 2001; Goldsborough, 2001). This owes something to the information-retrieval utilities, conventions, and protocols embedded into the programs. In the background of use of any search engine is the fact that, typically, its protocols employ Boolean terms, or logical operators (AND, OR, and NOT), together with such other operators as quotation marks (for exact-entry matches), ADJ (adjacent), or NEAR, and unknown-factor operator symbols, or wild cards (e.g., "?" or "*"), to represent logical relationships between search terms and so enable the creation of information sets. But it has been pointed out that many novice users of the Internet employ free-text or so-called "relevancy searching," which allows users to "simply enter their terms and click the Search button" (Courtois & Berry, 1999).

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al description of the URL (Uniform Resource Locator, or hyperlink address) comprising the title of the site to which the user will be linked when clicking on the title above. On some but not all Excite hits, this is followed by the notation "Excite Directory Match," as well as a secondary inserted hyperlink to a section in Excite's proprietary online listing of organizations in the same directory category as the company in the title of the same hyperlink. Thus one Excite Directory Match (in item 7 below) is for the category "US Computers & IT Companies - Q-Qua," and another (in item 8 below) is for the category "Business Management Associations." This is followed by a précis of the hyperlink entry. The components of Google hits were structured similarly but organized differently. Further, a feature of Google that is either not present at Excite or is so obscured by advertisements that it is difficult if not impossible to find, is a page explaining the structure of Google technology (Google, 2001). One feature of this is what Google refers to as PageRank, a term that the engine developers appear to have trademarked. Google explains: PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web [sic] by using its vast link structur
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Google Excite, Courtois Berry, Institute PMI, Indeed Excite, Management Institute, Indeed Google, Excite Google, project management, Cached Clicking, Pages Clicking, Wide Web, search engines, web site, google hits, excite search, search engine, exact phrase, search terms, google 2001, phrase project management, phrase project, site project management, words project management, project management institute, world wide web,
Approximate Word count = 2199
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)