|
Infoseek RIP.
Infoseek is no more. As of March 8, 2001, the former Go.com Web site no longer uses an Infoseek-based search engine. Instead, the search box is powered by GoTo.
This review will continue to be available to provide an historical record of the search capabilities Infoseek used to have.
|
Infoseek became part of Disney's Go Network in July 1999. It is in the middle of the size comparisons of Web search engines. Its reference databases, field searching, follow-up searching, date sorting, and case-sensitive searching set it apart. Use the table of contents on the left to navigate this review.
News: Jan. 30, 2001. Disney announces plans to abandon the Go portal. The site will continue for a time, but the go.com domain name and the Infoseek search engine components will be sold off. See "Disney Finally Gives Up on Troubled Go.com" at Internet World News and Danny Sullivan's report for more details.
Databases:
Infoseek offers its own directory and search engine databases along with many supplemental reference databases.
It is not currently a partner database on any other major sites.
Strengths:
* Sorts by site and date
* Rich supplemental resources and portal content
Weaknesses:
* Less powerful search features (no Boolean or limits)
* Smaller database
* May be sold, going away, or otherwise unsupported in the future
Default Operation:
Multiple search terms are processed as an OR operation by default if no + or - symbol is used.
Boolean Searching:
Infoseek searches use the + - syntax. No direct support for nested searches is available, although using Infoseek's ability to do follow-up searching with the + and - symbols can reproduce a nested Boolean search.
Proximity Searching:
Phrase searching is available by using "double quotes" around a phrase or by entering consecutive capitalized words such as proper names.
Truncation:
No truncation searching is available; however, Infoseek does automatic "intelligent pluralization." A term entered as plural or as singular will result in the same number of hits. There is currently no way of turning this feature off. This applies only to English-language terms.
Case Sensitivity:
Infoseek is case sensitive. If search terms are entered completely in lower case, all mixtures of upper and lower case are searched. If a search term contains one or more UPPER case letters, the search is limited to only records that exactly match the specified case.
Field Searching:
Infoseek has the following field searches. Field searching is available by using the field name followed by a colon : followed by the field query. For example, +link:www.notess.com -url:www.notess.com should find all pages in the database the link to my Web site excluding my own pages on this Web site. Scripted field searching is available in the Advanced Search except for site:. The URL and link field searches are for any word within a URL (where a word is defined as a character string separated by punctuation marks).
| Field | Explanation |
|---|
link: | Hypertext links include the term(s). link:notess.com finds pages with links to this site. |
site: | For a particular site as defined by a host names site:notess.com |
url: | Pages have the term(s) somewhere in the URL (host name, path, or filename). url:searchenginewatch |
title: | Hits have the term(s) in the HTML title element. title:"search engines" |
alt: | [No longer available.] Used to search for pages with the search term in the ALT (alternative text description) property within an IMG (Image) tag. alt:bird Found pages with a tag like
<IMG SRC="fly.gif" ALT="Birds">. Note: Not working as of November 1999. |
Limits:
The Advanced Search has a domain limit.
Stop Words:
All words can be searched in Infoseek, even very common ones. It has no stop words.
Sorting:
The default sort for Infoseek is by relevance score and by site. Relevance is determined by the location of the search terms (those higher in the document), the frequency of the words within the document, and the unusualness of the search words (uncommon words are rate higher). Link analysis is also used for relevance ranking. All pages from a specific site are grouped together, but clicking on the "Ungroup Results" option will re-sort them by relevance. The grouped results can also be sorted by date. Look for the option at the top of the results list.
Display:
The display includes the relevance score, title, a brief extract, URL, date, and size. Infoseek displays 10 records at a time. The option to "hide summaries" displays 20 records at a time and used to be available on the results display and directly in the Advanced Search.
Once records are displayed, Infoseek offers a follow-up search for searching only within the retrieval set. In May 1999, Infoseek introduced new features including the highlighting of search terms on the results page. It also added suggested phrases to search (listed as "Similar Searches" and quite like AltaVista's Related Searches available on their Simple Search page).
Special Features:
Infoseek and Go added a translation service in April 1999 for going between English and French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Like AltaVista, it uses the SYSTRAN software. However, it will translate larger documents than AltaVista's version.
Documentation:
Help Index
Go Press Releases (Nov. 99 - )
Older Infoseek Press Releases (April-Dec. '99)
Older logos:    
|
