eNew Egypt

Yahoo You Too!

In early December we featured New Egypt's Main Streets web site and all its benefits. In my excitement about all the wonderful things New Egypt's Main Streets had to offer, I said the most notable aspect of the New Egypt website was in the power of the search engine because it was "where New Egypt finds what it is looking for."

Since that column, I have received many emails from frustrated readers saying, now that we know "where to find it," show us "how to" find what we are looking for. I think we all share those same frustrations -- you know, those frustrations having to do with searching the Internet.

Today, it is estimated there are over 1 billion publicly available web documents on the Internet, and if things continue as they have, there will be 2 billion within the next 18 months. Surely, the Internet has become the single biggest resource ever known. So then, how does one find what one is looking for?

It's unfortunate this mass store of documents exists without a Dewey decimal system or some central "card catalog" for the Internet. On the other hand, there are search services available to assist you in your quest to find new information. Essentially, these search services come in two flavors. Each one of these search services has its place, and depending on your information needs, will impact how you find information on the Internet.

The first type of search service is the directory. A directory is a database of web sites organized into a directory by professionals. These professionals classify useful web sites into a hierarchical, subject-based structure. Yahoo is the most widely known and most widely used directory service. Yahoo and other directories are very useful when looking for information in clear categories, for example listings on federal and state agencies. Essentially you just drill down on the categories until you find a screen of useful sites within a single category.

The second type of search services is search engines. Search engines behave differently than directories in that they index words in web site documents. Excite, AltaVista and Infoseek are some of the more popular search engines. To find web site documents in a search engine you ask a question or submit a query. The search engine then matches your query words against the indexed words it has in its databases and presents a listing of possible documents. Typically, search engines are the most useful when looking for more difficult topic areas or for those topics that do not fit into the clear categories used by directories.

In some shape or form our readers have sighted that their biggest frustration lies in their inability to find the information they are looking for. This is largely due to the fact that even the biggest search engines only index up to one third of the Internet's public documents. This combined with the quality of the search results is enough to drive anyone insane. It is not unusual to get thousands (millions!) of web site documents matching your query. The quality of your search is based entirely upon the quality of your query, watch what you ask for, you just may get it.

Next week I will stop the madness, by showing you some of the ropes necessary to "power search'' the Internet. Until then, God Bless.

Vince Lotito is President & Founder of Internet eBusiness Solutions Center, a business and technology firm based in New Egypt. Have any questions you want answered but were afraid to ask? Drop me an email at eNewEgypt@mainstreetsusa.com or call 758-8858