Outline
Search services: analytical form

Header

General information

• Type of service (according to TK's typology): List and template based index
• Access (free, commercial): free
• Volume:
  • URLs known:
  • Number of documents indexed: The server indexes 6000 links from more than 2800 registered sites, which are added or modified by the very users who maintain the documents.
• Publisher: Martijn Koster, Nexor Ltd., UK
• URL for Top-level Page: http://www.nexor.co.uk/public/aliweb/aliweb.html
• Mirror sites: Several mirrors exist:
  Indiana University
  LEO - Link Everything Online (Munich, Germany)
  Traveller Information Services, Alabama (USA),
  National University of Singapore, Singnet in Singapore
  University of Applied Sciences Wolfenbuettel in Germany
  Oceanography Department NPGS Monterey in US
  The Center for Earth Observation
  Internet Interface Systems in Australia
  Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya DAC-UPC, Barcelona, Spain.
  Through other databases: The CUI W3 Catalog.

  URL for the organization: http://www.nexor.co.uk/

  History: Since Oct. 1993

  Update frequency of the whole database: Once a day

  Document rating, reviews, "added value" included: no

  Registration needed:no

  Costs: no

  Performance: not very good always

  • Response time: Sometimes very slow
  • Time outs:
  • Image download time:

  Harvesting

  Harvesting software:

  Robot (type; follows robot exclusion standard?):

  Method:

  • Human: Yes. 1. People write descriptions of their services in a standard format into a file on the web by hand or using automatic tools.
    2. They tell Aliweb about this file.
    3. Aliweb regularly retrieves all these files and combines them into a searchable database
    4. Anybody can come and search this database from the web.
  • Automatic: No
  • User registration: Yes
  • User deletable:

  Depth first

  Breadth first

  Type coverage:

  • WWW: Yes
  • gopher:
  • WAIS:
  • ftp:
  • telnet (OPACs):
  • UseNet News:
  • Listserv:
  • IRC:
  • Other databases (numeric, commercial):
  • Multimedia products (images, movie, sounds):
  • Other types:

  Geographic coverage:

  Subject coverage (General or specialized content): Server does not restrict documents by content

  Update frequency for visiting the same sites/documents again:

  Number of dead links:

  Indexing

  Indexing software: Collection of perl scripts

  What is indexed: All fields of the IAFA-templates describing documents

  • Extracted information, fields indexed:
    • Titles: Yes
    • Headings: Yes
    • Header information (included metainformation): yes, descriptions, keywords, resource-type, distribution
    • File information (size, date): yes
    • Links (URLs): Yes
    • The anchor text of links: No
    • Other HTML tags:
    • Summary/excerpts (how generated):
    • Full text:

  What is not indexed:

  Separate metainformation provided by the search service:

  • Human cataloguing and indexing:
  • Human summary/abstract, excerpt, review:

Retrieval system:

Search software:
Type of retrieval system:

• Boolean (exact match): no
• Best match: yes
• Combination: no
• Vector retrieval
• Nonverbal (citation indexing):
• Other:

Query structures and operations supported

• Natural language: No
• Word list (no Boolean operators associated): yes
• Boolean query: No
  Boolean operators: No
  AND
  OR
  NOT

  Nesting (parentheses supported)
  no
  Restrictions:
  mixing of operators
  number of search keys

  • Proximity operators: no

  1. distance in number of words
  2. distance in text structure
  3. bound phrases

  Other:

  Ranking algorithm:

  • ranking factors:
  • calculation of scores: from highest to lowest score

  User weighted words:

  Search terms: substring, whole word, regular expression

  Truncation: no

  • Not supported
  • Automatic
    1. stemming algorithm (morfological)
    2. add wildcard (mechanical)
    3. left (mechanical)
    4. right (mechanical)
  • Manual: no
    • left
    • right
    • internal
  • What is the default and is it user changeable?

  String match features:

  1. regular expressions: Yes
  2. internal masking:
  3. case sensitive specify: Yes
  4. others

  Any limits for a search term (character sets supported): Does not search but displays Latin-1.

  Any limits for the size of a result set:no

WHAT IS SEARCHABLE:

• Possibility to specify source types: Any, document or service, user, service, document, organization or siteinfo (Template-Type)
• System searches as default:
  • URL: No
  • Title, headings: Yes
  • Keywords: Yes
  • Summary: Yes
  • Fulltext: No
  • cited URL, anchor text: No
  • others
• User selectable search fields:
  • URL: Yes
  • Title, headings: Yes
  • keywords: Yes
  • Summary: Yes
  • Fulltext: No
  • cited URL, anchor text: No
  • others:
• Other search options: Additional controls let you restrict searches to certain content types or documents from a particular Internet domain.
• Stopword list
  • Uses the system a stopword list?
  • How is the stopword list constructed? (e.g. words exceeding a given absolut frequency are automatically put into the stopword list)
  • Can the stopword list be sidestepped in a search? (e.g. in a phrase search)

SEARCH IMPROVEMENT:

• Consept search: no
• Query expansion: no
• Controlled Vocabulary, thesauri: no
• Relevance feedback, find similar: no
• Improve your search support or form: No

• Navigation and graphical features: no
• Other features: no

RESULT DISPLAY:

• Result set information:
  total no
  subsets no

  Possible to choose number of displayed hits?: Yes

  Is the number of hits displayed limited by the service?: No

  What can be displayed:

  • URL: Yes
  • Hotlink to original document: Yes
  • Title, headings: Yes
  • Keywords: Yes
  • Summary: Yes
  • Fulltext: No
  • cited URL, anchor text: Yes
  • Show hits in context: No
  • Highlight hits: No
  • document size: No
  • document last updated No
  • document last visited No

  Pre-defined display formats:

  Other display options: URI, producer, template-type

• Information about relevance scores:
  Score displayed?: Yes
  Matching terms: No

  Sorting:

  URL-based: yes

  others (size, number of links): relevance based

  Afterprocessing of the result by the service:

  duplicate check:

  link check:

  Other display options

  Browsing structure (Subject catalogue), Organization of the result: no

  Browsing structure integrated with index?: no

User interface

• General description of interface: Structured, with the help of the boxes user can make the choises
• Clarity of interface: quite clear, several mirrors may cause confusement
• Clarity of search page or index: very clear
• Text-Only support: no
• HTML Forms support: Yes
• URL for Forms Search Page: http://web.nexor.co.uk/public/aliweb/search/ doc/form.html
• Query input form:
  • Optional forms for input:
    • simple but limited
    • structured: yes
    • free not limited
    • other supported

• Non-Forms support: No
• URL for Non-Forms Search Page:
• Adaptations to special browsers (Netscape, lynx): No
• Online Help?
• URL for FAQ Page: No
• URL for Help Page: http://web.nexor.co.uk/public/aliweb/doc/introduction.html
• Navigation Aids: No
• Search Tutorials: No
• Sample Searches:No
• Server Load Indicators:
• What's New page: No
• What's Popular page: No

Documentation

• Manual:
  Archie-Like Indexing in the Web
  Site-index.pl---indexing your web site
• Literature:
• Reviews:

Our evaluation of the service