Help on Searching at Ag

What is searched

Unlike external robots, such as AltaVista, that may only get to part of a site, Excite indexes every HTML file in the directories it's told to search. Right now it searches the college's and its departments' directories on www.uidaho.edu. It cannot search other servers.

How it is searched

At about 1:05 every morning an index is built for all these files using "unique concept search technology." It's best to try it to see what it does since the documentation that came with it is minimal - it's promotional software.

You'll find that keyword searches produce fewer but more confident results than concept searches. After a search is first performed, grouping by subject hints at how concepts are associated. See Excite's questions and answers too.

Titles

Authors and typists, it is important that all HTML files have titles for the indexing that happens locally and world-wide.


Rick Allard
February 21, 1997