Friday, November 16, 2007

UIR Episode 4&5 - My discovery...

Upon learning the 3 search facilities, I will have to complete my tasks for this week.

I am doing a research on the usage of 2-factor authentication. I found http://www.dsssasia.com/htmdocs/company/casestudy_cert_authority.htm from Google and http://www.datasecurity3.com/htmdocs/products/a_server/Streamline_2FA_logins.pdf from MetaCrawler. Apparently, I found none from Yahoo! Directories.

The above 3 search facilities are categorized as Search engine, Meta-search engine and Subject Directory, respectively.

These 3 search facilities are similar in the sense that the search results are also displayed in similar format, such that all three of them provide the title, the description and the link for the results. And, the currency of the three search facilities is equally as up to date. Of course, there are still other similarities. However, I will be naming two here for the time being and leave the rest for my Assignment 1 report.

Well, as for their differences, I guess will have to depend on their effectiveness.

Google
Strength: It provides a lot of relevant information. The most relevant search for this activity is found second in the list.
Weakness: The size of hits is too huge. Quite a number of unrelated ones, found from the search keywords, are also included.

MetaCrawler
Strength: Provide relevant sources of information and the size of hits is far smaller than Google.
Weakness: The most relevant resource that I have chosen falls on the 6th position. It is slightly further than Google.

Yahoo! Directories
Strength: Categorizing searches can help narrow down the results
Weakness: The results provided are too generic. In this case, I encounter difficulty in obtaining any relevant information.

In conclusion, Meta-search engine, MetaCrawler, will best meet my needs. This is because, the size of hits is of acceptable size, the relevant result despite slightly further than Google, but it is still within the top ten. Most importantly, it conducts its search across a few other search engines at the same time. Hence, it can provide information that both Google and Yahoo directories have.

Therefore, I think that I would prefer a Meta-search engine.
To be continued...

Posted by iMcelestinE at 12:46 PM