Why are search engines so different

The Jux2 Meta Search engine which provides results based on the results of google,yahoo and MSN provides a rather surprising statistic showing how much these major search engines differ in the top queries results.

Is it because the indexing method is different for these search engines? Or just a result of the type of use by the users of the searchers! I mean, do some results move up due to that being clicked upon by many users.

The rate of re-indexing will also be different, which can lead to the differences in the results. All this aside, the algorithms used by these engines should be different leading to these differences.

Veronica-a search engine for gopher protocol

The Gopher protocol is now used very rarely if at all. But Veronica was one of the first indexing engines. The latest version known as(Dont click on this link with internet explorer-use firefox or other browsers that support the Gopher protocol) Veronica-2 is still active. It is of interest as it does not index the contents of the files.

If you click on Search Veronica-2, a dialog box will appear where you can provide your query. The list of gopher servers that have the word(s) will be listed.Try using "SRS" as the query. It refers to the the servers with protein and nucleic acid sequences.

The latest addition to the search engines is VISHNU(Search VISHNU (experimental)), it arranges the results based on the folders in which the files are stored. It also shows the number of files in that folder. To begin with the indexing engine should have these basic features. Better features can be added later.

Reviving the meta tags

Meta tags have been used for describing a website and its content. But the use of meta tags has declined so much so that they are considered dead. Very few sites seem to have retained the meta tags on their sites.

The new buzz word is bookmarking. So why not use meta tag data for bookmarking?

The main argument against meta tag content was that it included more keywords than the data contained in the site. The idea of bookmarking is that the user makes sure that the site actually contains that data. The user has to type in all the tags before bookmarking. Here is a greasymonkey script to find meta keywords and description and provide a simpy this link on top of the page.

Simpy this meta data

The user can choose which keywords are appropriate and which are not. And the user is spared the burden of having to type in the tags and description.

Search the future-not black magic

No this is not black magic, it is the wonder of feed powered search. Rather than indexing the sites, the feed is indexed. With the "search the future" feature of bloglines you can get feeds for a keyword you subscribe to.

you can subscribe for the same at the following url, but you need to have a blog lines account for that.

http://www.bloglines.com/sub?mode=3

In their own words -"Want to know when someone posts something you're interested in? Enter a search query below, and be instantly notified when a blog entry that matches it becomes available to you"

This apart it would be useful to get alerts when somebody starts using a new word. The service should filter out typo's and show only folksonomies. (Words created due to a need for that word)