This study evaluated two different types of online information retrieval (IR) systems: online databases and Web search engines, in terms of user generated criteria. It also compares four types of Web search engines: directories, search engines, meta-search engines, and specialized search engines. The results show that three elements are essential to users in the evaluation of online IR systems:...

Although search engines are essential tools for finding information on the World Wide Web, the effective use of search engines for information retrieval (IR) is a crucial challenge for any Internet user. Based on the user-focused approach, this study investigates individual information retrieval behaviors using information processing theory. The results show that experience with search engines ...

My Ph.D. thesis focuses on the design of economic mechanisms inspired by sponsored search auctions to support new generation search engines. These engines (called integrators) are based on multi-domain queries and on the federation of multiple domain-specific search engines. The problem studied in my thesis is essentially a mechanism design problem where two levels are present: in the first, th...

Definition Metasearch is to utilize multiple other search systems (called component search systems) to perform simultaneous search. A metasearch engine is a search system that enables metasearch. To perform a basic metasearch, a user query is sent to multiple existing search engines by the metasearch engine; when the search results returned from the search engines are received by the metasearch...

The general search engine GSE provides service to the users by dispensing the users’ requests to the existing search engines. The existing search engines selected by GSE determine the searching qua&. Because the performance of the existing search engines and the users’ requests are changed dynamically, it is not favorable for the fixed search engines to optimize the holistic performance of GSE....

six web search engines, namely, altavista, excite, go, google, hot bot and lycos, were compared and evaluated in terms of their search capabilities (i.e., duplicate, false drops, mirror sites, dead links) and retrieval performances (i.e., precision) using sample queries drawn from real reference questions from the reference desk of the central library of shiraz university (mirzay-e-shirazi libr...