Web Search--Google Google Responds to a Couple of Recent ResourceShelf Posts and Other Stuff
1) On our recent post about Google size estimates being off, a Google spokesperson tells us what we for the most part already knew, "We looked at your queries and the bottom line is that Google's estimator is an estimate, not an exact number...we're working to making it more accurate." Like I said a few days ago, those of you who use Google page estimates as a way of determining popularity need to be very careful.
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2) On Google's SafeSearch eliminating key U.S. government sites, we learn that Google is 'seeing' what they can do to correct the problem. I think I'll follow-up letting them know that SafeSearch also eliminates useful pages from well-known library directories like the LII and IPL. Very sad because these types of tools are of tremendous value to all researchers.
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3) Earlier today Greg Notess reported about his discovery of Google's "Supplemental Index". ResourceShelf has learned the following about this index from a Google spokesperson:
* It's an experimental feature
* It augments search results for hard-to-answer queries, by searching a supplemental collection of web pages -- in addition to its main index of 3.3 billion web pages. Results from this index are marked "Supplemental" because they originate from a separate, experimental index that is only used to answer the most obscure and infrequent queries.
* I've asked a few follow-up questions to this somewhat cryptic response including: how does Google determine what goes into the supplemental index and what's an obscure query? Stay tuned.
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