News and Updates on Search Engines

 

AltaVista News.	Excite News	Click on the logo to go to the engine itself
HotBot News	Go.com (Infoseek) News		New Kids on the Block: Profile  Profile Profile Search Profile       Back to the Main Page
Lycos News	Northern Light  News
WebCrawler News	Yahoo! News
Meta-Search Engine News


 




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AltaVista News and Changes
 
 
 
• AltaVista has (for the third time in a few months) radically changed its look (and some of its content.).

 

 

1- The portal features have been moved around on the page and some dropped (The "My  AltaVista" personalized page, Clubs, Photo Albums, Home Pages, Message Boards, Chat, are gone.)

2 - Power Search, which had recently moved from the left column to the "More Search Options" link near the search box, has disappeared from the home page, but is, at the moment, still available.  Get to it by clicking on the Search Tools link on the home page and you will find it under "Tools," where you will also find a link to Raging Search.  You can also get to Power Search at: www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=ps

3- The "channels" are pretty well hidden, but are accessible by clicking the "more" link at the end of the "Search Tools" collection of links on the home page.

4- Image Search is now found under Search Tools, and images are also one of the options under the Media/Topics Search link near the query box, as well as by using the "Images" tab on results pages.

5 - "Fast Finds," "Services" (Translate, etc.) and "Shopping," are now found under "Find Products" and Search Tools" below the search box area.

6 - "News" is now found under the "More news" link on the " Breaking news" line, and also by using the "News" tab on results pages.
 

Though two are well-hidden, all four versions of AltaVista are still available (Home, Advanced, Power, Raging Search.)  Here's how they compare ( to the old versions and to each other):
 

Home - Same functionality as the old home page search.  Can use simplified Boolean ( + , - ), truncation, phrase searching (quotation marks), and field prefixes (title:, url:, etc.).  The language box is available as before.

Power Search - Find it on the Search Tools page or at www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=ps-
Same functionality in the the "Home" interface, but, importantly, additional qualifiers are available by means of pull-down windows and text boxes. A very good variety of search options is clearly presented and you no longer need to remember the secret codes (field prefixes).  The features available include:

• Simplified Boolean (Any of the words, All of the Words)
• Phrase searching (by designating it in the pull-down window, as well as by using quotation marks)
• Full Boolean, (AND, OR, AND NOT ( ) ), by designating it in the pull-down window.  Unfortunately, as with Advanced AltaVista, use of full Boolean still seems to override the relevance ranking.
• Date - by time frame (week, month, etc.), or specific date range
• Language
• Region, country
• Domain
• URL
Power search also allows a choice of "one result per website" and 10,20,30,40, or 50 results per page.

Raging Search (from the Search Tools page or at ragingsearch.altavista.com ) See the previous note (dated 5/00) below. Extremely simple interface page (Google look-alike), with basically the same functionality as AltaVista's home page search, but also with customizable options for language, results per pages, etc. For more details on Raging Search, see below.

Advanced Search - Exactly the same functionality as the old Advanced Search --- Full Boolean but not simple Boolean, language, Sort-by box, and date range searching.

(2/01)


 
• AltaVista has made some significant changes in its Translation feature.

- In addition to translating (either way) between English and French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian, you can now translate:
    Russian to English
    German to French
    French to German
- On the translation page (click Translate on AltaVista's home page), you can pull up a "World Keyboard" (Look for the "World Keyboard" icon on the right side of the translation screen.)  This brings up a keyboard window which permits you to type using the following character sets:
    "World" - (general Roman and non-Roman characters)
    English
    French
    Spanish
    German
    Portuguese
    Italian
              Russian
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You can also use this to type non-Roman text into the translation box, then copy and paste that text to another application, such as Word, or to an email message.
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Also, just using AltaVista's translate feature to translate a page from your search results records just got a step easier.  Clicking on the "Translate" link at the bottom of a record will now take you directly to the translated page, instead of  to the intermediate SYSTRANS/AltaVista page. (6/00)
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• Raging Search.   You get to it at ragingsearch.com. If you remember the old "pure search engine" form of AltaVista, which had few add-on's (portal features,) this is an even more extremely "pure" version, with a basic query box and little else on the page (very similar to Google's home page.)


          If you like a simple interface, Raging Search is a very workable option. Though there is little on the page
          other than the query box, you can still use many of the most important of AltaVista's regular search features
          available in AltaVista's home page version.  Among these are field qualifiers such as:
                     title:
                     url:
                     link:
                     etc.,

         For Boolean, as with AltaVista's homepage, you are limited to plus and minus ( +term, -term).
         Phrase searching (of course,) and truncation are also available.

         There is a "Customize" link which allows further search functionality, including:

• Language - Choose the language you'd like to search in and also the character set you need (Western European, Eastern European, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Baltic languages, Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.)
• Adult content filter
• Number of results per page (10, 20, 30, 40, 50)
• Translate on/off - causes the "Translate" link to appear or not appear on each record
          (at least those in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian.)
         Output - You will get the same records as with AltaVista's homepage search, but each record is briefer,
         excluding the "last modified date,"  size, language, and links to company fact sheets.  Most of these
         can be added back in using the customize options discussed above. On results pages, you will also
         find a lot of often useful add-ons missing, such as  RealNames links, links to matching Open Directory
         categories, links to news, etc.  This is one of the significant tradeoffs.

        Raging Search's simplicity is great, but you will be missing the value of numerous portal features
        and the integration of some useful resources on results pages. If you like the simplicity, go for it --
        you  may also find significantly improved loading time because of the minimal graphics.  AltaVista
        is to be commended for presenting users with this ultra-simple, yet powerful search option. (5/00)
 
 
 

• LookSmart, the directory used by AltaVista, now claims to be the "largest editorially reviewed directory of content on the World Wide Web," with "nearly one million listings in 24,000 categories." (LookSmart press release, 2/9/99).  This size rivals and maybe even surpasses Yahoo!.  The last time I spoke to the folks at Yahoo!, they adamantly refused to give me a solid number for size.  Remember that LookSmart is also available directly at looksmart.com.

• The lists of "related terms," which appears as the result of searches on common terms, appears only in the results of Simple Searches, not Advanced Searches. Clicking on these will cause that search to be run. [See ESG. pg. 57. This is a clarification, not a change.]

Excite News and Changes

• Excite seems to have just "dummied-down" its results pages considerably.  On June 8, several nice things disappeared from the results pages.  Keep an eye out, with luck they may put some of them back.  In the meantime, you get some new graphics, but the following are gone:

• Excite has now reched the 250- million-page mark.  This, along with last year's enhancement of its "Advanced Search" mode, is an indication that the serious searcher should begin taking another look at Excite.  Because of its integration of news (particularly "NewsTracker Clipping Service"), its very complete "portal" offerings, and the integration of directory sites, news, and other features into its results pages, Excite seems poised to regain its position as one of the real  leaders among search engine services. (9/99, modified 2/00)

• Excite continues to integrate more content into its results pages.  Along with results from its Web database, its subject directory, news resources, "Country Info," "City Info,"  etc., you now get links to relevant discussion groups (Usenet), Excite's Product Finder, and other resources.  Of particular note is the Health Encyclopedia.  Search on a medical term and you may see a definition of the term appear at the top of your results.  When you do a search on Excite, take a few extra seconds to look closely at the entire results page.  For both the casual searcher and the more serious searcher, there is a wealth of content on Excite results pages beyond just the Websites from Excite's Web database. (9/99)

• Excite has significantly enhanced its Power Search mode and renamed it "Advanced Web Search."  (See ESG, pp. 71, 72-73.)  About 2/3 of the page remains the same but Excite has added the ability to specify language (English, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese. Spanish, Swedish), search by country (any one of the twenty-nine listed), and specify domain type (.com, .edu, .net, .org, .gov, .mil).  It has also added the option of an adult content filter. (This note modified 8/99)

Formerly, Power Search gave the choice of searching the Web, Selected Web Sites (Excite's directory), Current News, or country-specific versions of Excite.  These choices are no longer an option on the Advanced Search page, but can be found through the "More Search" link which leads to Excite's "channels."   The "More Search" link is located immediately under the query box on Excite's home page, as well as elsewhere. Country-specific versions are available on the "More Search" page, as well as on  Excite's home page (at the bottom, under "Global Excite").  News search is available as one of the channels. Considering that the results of a directory search are now automatically shown on all results pages, all of the old Power Search options are still available, but presented differently. (This note modified 8/99)
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Excite is still keeping a low profile for the advanced mode, with the link placed rather obscurely at the bottom of Excite's home page. It takes some digging to discover all that Excite offers, but when you do, you realize that Excite really has done an excellent job of implementing the "portal" concept.
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• .Output: Cities have now been added to the categories (along with companies and sports teams) where Excite will automatically provide related information on results pages.  (See ESG, page 76.) On a search for "New York," you will automatically be shown a map, current weather, and a list of "resources" links for "Where to stay," "What to do." etc.  This is a helpful and well-designed feature for these very general searches.

• For a brief period in early 1999, on Excite's Power Search page, you were provided with an option (under "I want to search") to "Click here to perform an Audio/Video search."  This led to a search of RealAudio and RealVideo streaming media files.  With the May, 1999 changes to the Power Search page (now called "Advanced Web Search") this disappeared.

• HotBot has left-hand truncation.  (This relates to ESG. pp. 24, 90.) This one sneaked in on me, so I don't know how long its been available, but it's and important feature.  If you search for *siloxane, you will also retrieve polysiloxane, etc.  After a number of tests, this seems to work consistently and well.  Unless the others are keeping it a secret, HotBot is the only major search engine providing this feature. (1/00)

• Now when you do a search, HotBot includes at the top of your results list any matches from the subject headings  in its directory (Open Directory). (This relates to ESG, pp. 93-95). This means that your results will consist of the following:
• Directory Results - Matching subject heading from the directory
• Web Results
• Top ten from Direct Hit (if Direct Hit has ten -- if it has fewer you'll see a link to take you to however many Direct Hit has on the topic)
• Results from HotBot's main database
    (8/99)

• HotBot has added a "text-only version" (found at the bottom of its home page) If waiting for images to load is consuming a lot of your time, consider this. (8/99)

• HotBot is now using Open Directory instead of LookSmart for its directory. (This relates to ESG, pp. 97-100.)  Now when you click on one of the categories listed on the right side of HotBot's home page you are no longer led to LookSmart, but instead, to Open Directory. Open Directory, which is now also incorporated into Lycos, is the result of a collaboration involving HotBot, Lycos, and Mozilla.org. In contrast to Yahoo! and LookSmart, Open Directory  is created by volunteers who specialize in particular subject areas.

As before, if you are in HotBot's advanced version ("More Search Options") you must still return to the HotBot home page ("Return to Fewer Options") to get to the directory.

Searchability of Open Directory on HotBot - You can search specifically for directory listings (rather than HotBot's full Web database) but how you do so is rather obscure. To search the directory, search for a term using HotBot's main query box.  At the bottom of the results page you will see an offer of a "Second Opinion."  One of the options given is Lycos and by clicking on the Lycos icon, your search will be carried there.  In Lycos, you now see Open Directory results at the top of Lycos results pages. An easier way to search the Open Directory  is to just go into Lycos in the first place.
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Open Directory is a good addition to the directory options available on the Web. For Web directories in general, look first to see if the way they categorize sites is compatible with your needs. Also remember that LookSmart is still available directly at Looksmart.com

• "Direct Hit" Enhancement - Until February, you were given the "Top 10 Most Visited Sites" option on results pages.  This took you to the most "popular" sites for your topic as identified by the Direct Hit engine.  HotBot is now in the process of automatically incorporating these into your search results and giving the Direct Hit list at the beginning of your results. (In some cases it will be fewer than ten, and for more obscure topics, Direct Hit may not identify any "popular" sites.)

Direct Hit has also now added a list of related search terms to some HotBot results pages.  These are drawn from similar queries from other searchers. Particularly for searches on a topic you're not familiar with, or where you can't think of a way to further narrow your search, these suggestions can often be useful.
Both of these features are still under development and you may see variations on the above until HotBot has completed the integration. Overall, these changes will probably result in a significant benefit to searchers in terms of the relevance of the first items you see.
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• .The "open in new window" symbol which used to appear by each all HotBot result is gone.  (This relates to ESG, pg. 95).  This was handy, but not really a big deal, since the same effect (of opening a new window for the desired page so you can easily go back to the results page) is always available in any engine.  See page 94. (This note belatedly added 8/99.).

• On HotBot's home page, if you look very closely at "Pages Must Include," you will find that the "audio" choice has been replaced by "MP3." MP3 ("MPEG 1 Layer 3.") is a new kind of digital sound file with extremely high compression and with sound quality similar to that on CDs. (If you want a nice, brief description of MP3, take a look at MP3 Music:  A Brief Introduction For Young People.  For more details, see MPEG Audio Layer 3 (MP3)).

Fortunately, HotBot's "More Search Options" page still has the "audio" option which allows you to search for a variety of sound files.   If you're looking for a sound clip of  Churchill's "Finest Hour" speech, you now MUST use the "More Search Options" page, not HotBot's home page.

Go (aka Infoseek, aka "Go Network") News and Changes

GO GOing GOne(?)
 

• Disney, its owner, announced at the end of january that Go.com would be turned off at teh end of the month.  As of the moment it si still there, but don't expect it to remain, unless an unexpected buyer comes along. (2/01)

• Go.com (Go Network) has been radically redesigned and they have announced that it is now focusing on recreation and leisure, meaning, in effect, that "serious searchers" can scatch it from their list of preferred engines.  Among the strengths in the old version which are no longer there are: rich results pages, the translation option, country-specific versions, and highlighting of hit terms in results.  The number of results typically retrieved is less than half of what HotBot retrieves (and HotBot retrieves significanlty less than the other large search engines.)  In the Second Edition of ESG, Go.com will be dropped. (10/00)

• GO Network (Infoseek) now features a RealNames link, that will appear at the top of the "Web search results" listing.  If the company you are looking for has listed its name with RealNames, this provides a quick and easy way to get to a company homepage (or to a page for a specific product.)  (8/99, modified 10/00)

• . GO.com, in its transformation from Infoseek, has changed the appearance of its home page considerably, as part of its integration into the "GO Network."   (Modified 5/00)

• The old infoseek.com address now shifts you to infoseek.go.com. " www.go.com" takes you to the same place.

• In GO.com's results pages' listing of Web directory topics,  the full directory hierarchy used to be shown (e.g., "Education > History > By time period > Prehistory"). Now, only the bottom level directory subject heading is shown (e.g., "Prehistory").  Clicking on that will take you to the directory, where you can then see the full subject heading hierarchy and directory entries.  [I guess they thought their average user just couldn't handle the sophistication of a subject hierarchy.]  (Modified 5/00)

• .GO.com now has also joined other services in presenting a list of "suggested queries" on results pages.  Look at the "Did you really mean" section at the top of results pages.  (Modified 5/00)

• Go.com has also joined AltaVista, HotBot, and Lycos in offering an adult content filter. Infoseek's version is called GOguardian and can easily be turned on or off, with the exception of the "Kids" and "Family" sections of the directory, where it is always "on."
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Lycos News and Changes

• Lycos deserves a recap of some of the changes which have taken place over the last several months:

- Lycos' Advanced Search (formerly ProSearch) now uses Fast Search results
- Incorporation of Direct Hit results (discussed below)
- Replacement of its old directory with Open Directory (discussed below)
- Incorporation of directory and other results directly into results pages (discussed below)
- Numbers of hits are now shown on Lycos results pages.
- Lycos has added the MultiMedia Search option on its home page..
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• Now when you use Lycos' Advanced Search page and choose the "All the Web" option (vs. the books, news, recipes, etc. databases), you are searching the Fast Search database.  The search options, though arranged differently on the page, are the same as in the Fast Search Advanced page (simple Boolean, phrase, language, title, URL, domain, language, links to) with the exception of "link contains" which is in the Fast Search version, but not Lycos.  What's this mean for the searcher?  It looks like you can stick to the more familiar Lycos and still take advantage of Fast Search's gigantic (300 million record) database. (This relates to ESG, pp.119-121.) (2/00)

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•  Lycos has added the MultiMedia Search option on its home page. Clicking  on this will lead to a search page for Pictures, Sounds, Movies, Streams.  "Sounds" and "Movies" refer to the non-"streaming" versions of those media. This page represents  a nice refinement of similar options on Lycos' Advanced Search page.  In addition, Lycos provides a section on the MultiMedia ("RichMedia") page for downloading a wide range  of media applications files for use with the search results. The "Search Scrub" option shown on the page is a content (adult) filtering option.

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• Numbers of hits are now shown on Lycos results pages.  (This relates to ESG, pg. 23.) Lycos had been the only major search engine not to do so. (01/00)

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• Lycos is now incorporating results from the Direct Hit search engine at the top of Web pages results lists. This "popularity" approach to ranking results is quickly proving itself to be very effective and has been incorporated into HotBot's results for some time and is now also used in MSN Search. (This relates to ESG, pp.123-124.) (8/99)

• Lycos has replaced it's old directory with the Open Directory. (This relates to ESG, pp.127-128.) With this significant change, when you do a search on Lycos, in the Web Sites section of the results you will first be shown the matching categories and Web sites from Open Directory.  (Formerly you were first shown entries from the old smaller Lycos Web Guides directory.) Open Directory is produced by a collaboration of Lycos, HotBot and Mozilla.org. Unlike the paid reviewers used by most other large Web directories, Open Directory  is created by volunteers who specialize in particular subject areas. Open Directory is now also available on Lycos' sister service, HotBot. (This comment revised 01/00)

Searchability - Because of the Yahoo-like way Lycos has integrated the directory into its searching, any search on Lycos will automatically search Open Directory and present the directory records clearly separate from other results.
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Structure of Open Directory. Open Directory has fourteen top level subject categories.  Each of these has typically from 15-50 subcategories.  Within the fourteen categories there are usually from two to five additional levels of hierarchy.

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As noted above, Open Directory has now also been adopted as HotBot's directory.  Interestingly, the two implementations, HotBot and Lycos, yield significantly different numbers of results. For Open Directory, as with any Web directory,  its usefulness may be largely a function of whether the way it categorizes its sites is compatible with your needs.
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• On Lycos results pages, (ESG, pg. 123) you are now shown "Popular" sites, Web Sites, News Articles, and Shopping hits.  For any of the four which have matches for your query, there is a link which takes you to that point on the results page, or to a separate page if there are lots of results. In the "Web Sites" section are matching entries from the Open Directory which Lycos uses for its directory. (Revised 01/00)

• .Lycos PRO Search (ESG, pp. 119-123) is now called Lycos Advanced Search.

• Lycos' FTP Search is no longer through ZDNet, but rather through its own branded interface and database.

 
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 Northern Light News and Changes

• If you haven't tried it, try Northern Light's GeoSearch. This unique approach allows you to search the Northern Light database and specify the geographic origin (if US or Canada) associated with the page.  It allows you to find businesses and other organizations within a distance you designate. This feature utilizes technology from Vicinity Corporation which converts geographic indications found within the page to latitude and longitude.  Search features such as Boolean, which are available in other sections of Northern Light, are also usable here.

 

 
 
 

A term or terms must be entered in the "Search for" box.

With this search form you can:

-  Specify geographic location by
- Street address (must also specify city and state or province)
- City (must also specify state or province)
- State or province
- ZIP code
- Telephone area code
-  Designate an approximate radius to be covered (1,5,10,25,50, or 100 miles)
-  Search for either US or Canadian sites.
-  Limit subjects to one or more subject categories
-  Limit documents to selected domains or type of documents such as personal pages.
-  Select Date Range.  Specify start and end date using the mm/dd/yyyy format.
-  Sort results by relevance for date and time.  (1/01)


Results show the matching addresses associated with the page and provide a link which will generate a map (from MapBlast) with the location(s) indicated by an asterisk.
 

• Northern Light has announced some significant enhancements to its relevance ranking technology. Most  significantly, it is now incorporating a popularity element. NL has taken the "link popularity" approach (the approach used by Google), rather than "click popularity" (the approach used by Direct Hit.)  The popularity factor in the algorithm is based on the number of links to the site rather than the number of times the sites has been clicked on for a specific query.

• If you haven't tried out Northern Light's Alert service, do it now.  There must be something you'd like to automatically keep updated on.  For those of us who remember when you had to pay $5 or so for a weekly update on a single publication, online alerting services are astonishing [Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary gives two definitions for astonish: (1) "to strike with sudden fear" (2) "to strike with sudden wonder".  If you work for a service which still charges significant amounts for "'alerts," use the first definition.  Others, use the second.]  Northern Light provides email delivery of results from its Web and Special Collection -- for free.  As with the rest of Northern Light, you'll get Web pages for free, and free abstracts and citations for special collection documents, with an option to purchase the full-text of the latter. To get to the alerting service click on the Alerts button on the left of the Northern Light home page. From the resulting page you can create new alerts, and edit or delete current ones.  You can choose to search using any of the following modes: Simple, Power, Business, Investext, News.   For more details, see http://www.northernlight.com/docs/alerts_help.html  (10/99)

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• Northern Light has changed its homepage significantly, offering more search options.  These include: the ability to immediately specify results from particular sources (the Web, Special Collection, Investext Reports, Wall Street Journal Abstracts, Business Week, Fortune, "Newspapers Wires & Transcripts," College Newspapers, Broadcast News Transcripts), links to new versions of the advanced search options ( Power Search, Business Search, Investext Search, Stock Quotes, News), headlines, the DJIA, and a link to the beta version of what promises to be an extremely powerful and valuable "Search Alert Service".  More later. (9/99)

 
• Northern Light has made two changes in its output (7/99) [ESG, pg. 139]:

    - Because of radically increased demand on the system (due to recent
       well-deserved publicity about Northern Light covering a larger portion of the
       Web than its competitors) the number of records displayed is now 10 rather than
        25.
    - Multiple hits from a single site are now grouped together under a single entry,
       with details shown only for one page. Northern Light refers to these grouped
       results as "embedded folders."  Look for the folder icon and the "More results
       from this site" link at the end of records.  Fortunately for comparison purposes,
       the number of hits which is reported includes the total number (There may be 45
       hits, but you might see only 32 of them until you click on the "More results from
       this site" links.)
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• Not a part of the Northern Light interface itself, but needing mention, is the Northern Light/NTIS rollout of gov.search (at www.usgovsearch.com).  gov.search provides access to government websites and government documents including most importantly, the NTIS database (for a fee).  A controversy surfaced on the day of release regarding whether NTIS should be charging for documents produced at taxpayer expense, but this should quickly blow over. [Editorial opinion:  The "watchdogs" who raised the issue seem not to have noticed that payment for the production and delivery of NTIS, and other documents, has been clearly legitimized over the last several decades. As a taxpayer, I am very willing to pay for copies of a document I want for my own collection. I am not willing to have my tax dollars pay for their delivery to anyone who wants a document for free. The final cost to me for the latter would be much greater than the pay-per-document approach taken by NTIS.  gov.search provides for much easier, and inexpensive, access to the government report literature than was previously possible.]

• Northern Light has two new searchable collections, WEFA and Investext, each represented by a new tab at the top of the Northern Light home page.  See below for details.

• WEFA is a  searchable collection of "Premium Reports and Forecasts on Economic Conditions and Financial Markets.",  These reports come from the WEFA Group (formerly Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates) and cover economic and financial analysis and forecasts for over 100 countries. They also provide regional coverage of the U.S. economy and industry analysis.

As part of Northern Light's Special Collection, a search will provide you with the       citation and a brief summary, plus the option of purchasing the entire document online.
These reports are searchable by:
                    Words anywhere
                    Words in title
                    Date
                    Category -
                             Industry
                             Currency
                             Commodity
                            Country
                             US States
                             US Metro Areas
                             Special WEFA Reports
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• The similarly well respected Investext collection of investment and analyst reports is also now available. This collection includes reports from over 500 brokerage houses and investment banks.  These are searchable by company name, ticker symbol, product, research firm, industry (29 of them), and date range.  You can also limit your retrieval to company (vs. industry) reports. Very importantly, as will be recognized by seasoned Investext searchers, you can view results either by report or individual pages.

As with the rest of Northern Light's Special Collection, summaries are free and you can purchase and view the full record online immediately.  Adding to the economy of your search, you can purchase individual pages as well as the entire report.
Searching note: To browse reports for an industry, just check the appropriate industry box and click "Search.".  You don't need to enter any terms in the query boxes.
 
• A Northern Light representative has clarified what Northern Light does regarding case-sensitivity. (ESG  pp. 136 and 40)  You cannot search with mixed case and retrieve only those records with an exact case match. However, those records which have the exact case match will appear in the results ahead of the other records.

• Northern Light is now up to 155 million pages - now the largest of the search engines.

 
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     WebCrawler Changes

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     Yahoo Changes

• One very minor change -- the link to Yahoo!'s advanced version is now referred to on the home page as "advanced search" rather than "options."
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Meta-Search Engine News

• Dogpile - Radio buttons have replaced the pull-down window for choosing whether to search the Web, Usenet, FTP, or news wires.  Some of the options which were formerly listed on the left of the page are now also radio buttons (weather, yellow pages, etc.).