Information Research Weblog

The Overture search engine, bought by Yahoo!, now has an index, courtesy of FAST - also bought by Yahoo! - of, it is claimed, more than 3.2 billion Web pages. (News from Research Buzz)

Ah, but can one find "Information Research", you ask? Well, it seems that it can. My usual test is to see whether the journal comes in the top two or three when searched for as a phrase or as just the two words. Overture turns up trumps - IR is the first listed 'additional' site. The first site returned is always a sponsored site, i.e., one that is paying to be listed.

There's a twist, however, the IR index page only comes up number 2 on the US listing. If one selects UK as the country, there are three 'sponsored' sites and the fourth site is the redirection page for IR on the Department of Information Studies site at Sheffield. One can play games like this all day: when I searched from the Netherlands page, the first mention of the journal was at number 3, but that was the catalogue entry at the Royal Library. From the Japan page I found no mention at all. Obviously, these country pages cover sites in the country, rather than international sites - except for the USA, which, I suppose, is thought to be international?

The Research Buzz item asks how Overture is going to wean people off Google - good question. Yahoo! has spent a lot of money acquiring search capabilities so, presumably, it must have a cunning plan.