Are the RSC allowing Web-spiders into the site and are major updates submitted to the web-search engines so as to ensure a renewed grab by the spider? Also do the titles of the webpages repeat the name of the organisation as well as the topic of the webpage to enforce the association(?0 If not - it is not surprising that little comes up on the RSC(?).
From Month to month - spiders can be 20 to 75% of downloads to the academic domain I would after. Which is good - this means (in theory) the info can be easy to find on the search engines. http://www.ccp14.ac.uk (At least for the tests I have tried)
However: Be wary though that the search engines that search search engines can be perturbed. For instance, if you only submit to Alta-Vista - this is only one search engine that gives the hit that when averaged out - may hide in the noise despite it being spot on with the keywords. Due to recently releasing some Oral talk notes on the web - I have had a chance to test this out. One of the talks being about Phase Identification using Powder X-ray Diffraction. A quite specialised topic. This was submitted to Altavista and searching there on Phase Identification did gives it the top of the list http://www.altavista.com/ (however today - it looks like it is hidden in the noise so these things could be very time dependent on how recent a spider crawl was done or other parameters inside the systems) But try the normally excellent search engines like www.infind.com (when it was top of the list at Altavista) gave nothing on the hit. --- Not sure if clear conclusions can be given but the relevance of hits with search engines seem to fluctuate. I am wondering if they are updating the indexing enough or additional information puts too much noise into the system that takes a while to clear up? in the case of www.infind.com - it used to be top notch for "relevant" hits - but seems to be fluctuating lately such that www.google.com is presently doing a better general job. of course this may vary depending on the type of search being requested. Lachlan.
Hello Chemweb( Com & Imperial varieties), I liked the information from Adam Hodgkin and used Google to demonstrate search engines to a student - the results were quite nice ( some peculiar results found - as usual- but easily sorted )- but when my own "name" and "chemistry" were input I was surprised to find so little reference to the Royal Society of Chemistry ( my top hits were from ChemWeb.com and the Chemical Structure Association - full marks to them !!). Perhaps the RSC would like to comment - they are THE Professional organisation for chemists - particularly in view of adverse comments (not from me) on other aspects of their efforts , previously circulated via this list. Perhaps they or the Royal Society should sponsor a chemistry (science) biased search engine we could all be happy with. On a related matter, I recently received an information leaflet about the RSC's Library & Information Centre. I liked the idea of using their CD-Roms and possibly doing on-line searches myself(preferably using CAS Sci-Finder) but was told access is only available from London. This is a poor service for the majority of members not located near London, it explains why I have never made use of this facility in 30 years of active chemistry, and with modern IT there is very little excuse for it. I will forward this email( & FAX a copy to the editor of Chemistry in Britain just in case) perhaps he might include it in the "Comments feature" of Chemistry in Britain for those members not served by ChemWeb list. Bernard.
On Wed, 7 Apr 1999 11:38:55 +0100 "Rzepa, Henry" <h.rzepa@ic.ac.uk> wrote:
From: "Adam Hodgkin" <adamgh@dial.pipex.com>
Hello Chemweb
There is a very interesting new search engine on the block. Try www.google.com
I tested it with some obvious search terms (ATP, Sodium Chloride, Wendy Warr, Henry Rzepa, MDL, ChemWeb etc) and found useful results.
Particularly handy is the ability to disambiguate (ATP collects lots of Advanced Technology Programs etc -- but you clear the fog by simply adding 'chemistry' to your search term); AND the coolest feature you can immediately click on red bars which show the extent to which the page is cited (hyperlinked from other pages in the google repository). This is a useful way of ranking importance/relevance/webcentrality.
The other features of the system are well-explained at the site; but I add that the designers have put in some very cool and simple design features which they dont brag about. They style it a 'beta' version, but I am begining to use it in preference to AltaVista and Excite etc
I think it will have good special applications for chemistry.
Adam
Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY; mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804. URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/
chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)
---------------------- Dr. B. Blessington Pharmaceutical Chemistry Dept., Bradford University. Bradford BD7 1DP. U.K.
email: b.blessington@bradford.ac.uk tel: 44 (0) 1274 234704 WWW: http://www.student.brad.ac.uk/bblessin/
chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)
-- Lachlan M. D. Cranswick Collaborative Computational Project No 14 (CCP14) for Single Crystal and Powder Diffraction Daresbury Laboratory, Warrington, WA4 4AD U.K Tel: +44-1925-603703 Fax: +44-1925-603124 E-mail: l.cranswick@dl.ac.uk Ext: 3703 Room C14 NEW CCP14 Web Domain (Under heavy construction): http://www.ccp14.ac.uk chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)