Search Engine Wars Support
Yahoo! announces that it will mine the "deep web", estimated at 550 bllion documents usually only accessible through a site's own proprietory search - things like academic databases, phone directories and the like. Google currently indexes 4.2 billion pages, but is currently undergoing criticism that since the "Florida update" in which many sites found their ranking plummeted, their results are full of spam. Certainly, for non-power users, results are becoming less useful. Typing in the name of a hotel that you want to stay at (maybe you want a streetmap or a phone number) results in endless pages of hotel booking services before you actually find what you're looking for. Similar google grumbles abound. I love Google for its speed, clean interface, and the way it kicked other Search Engines into raising their efficiency, but I the Yahoo! initiative is to be welcomed for introducing some competition, which has been lacking in the last couple of years.