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Science.gov Embraces Metadata
By David Utter
Expert Author
Article Date: 2005-11-21
The 3.0 version of the search engine at Science.gov should demonstrate better results when it comes to relevance.
Government Computer News reported on the latest upgrade to the search engine at Science.gov. Version 3.0 went live last week, and incorporated bibliographic data into search queries.
The site calls the data "MetaRank"; that data includes "title, author, date, abstract, and other keyword identifiers." Walter Warnick, director of the Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information, likened the new search relevancy ranking to Google's approach, but noted some differences.
For one, MetaRank was created to work with database data primarily, not web pages. "MetaRank greatly expands the amount of information that comes back with each hit, so the relevance ranking can be more sophisticated," Warnick said in the report. Science.gov retrieves data from 30 science databases and 1,800 web sites.
The organization also modified the boolean search functions to better duplicate the functionality of commercial search engines from a user perspective. The operators AND, OR, and NOT can be used in a query. Also, as early results come from the query, they will be displayed while the query continues to retrieve more results.
About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.
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