World‐Wide Web searching tools: an evaluation

Abstract

Many tools exist to provide subject access to information stored on the Web. These include both automatic search engines such as ‘crawler’ programs and manually‐created subject indexes. In this article, four search engines and two subject collections with a search facility are compared in terms of their content, interface, search features, output and performance. For comprehensive searches of Web material, no single tool was found to be satisfactorily effective, and doubts remain as to whether such tools can yet be incorporated in the mainstream of online searching.