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Chaos and Search Engines

Just a few years ago, when it was still possible to play down the significance of the Internet, I recall somebody saying that what the Internet needed was a good librarian. Of course, that person was a librarian themself, but they were rightly pointing to the fundamental informational chaos that ruled at that time.

Since then, there has been a massive explosion in what is commonly termed 'search engines'. This term, now generically used for all kinds of sites with services that guide the user to the various forms of Internet document available, has its origin in those services which developed an index automatically, using 'robot' software. The so-called robot 'visits' each site, following links, and reporting back the text it finds and the pages in which it finds it. Naturally, what it finds is very dependent on the design of the page. Very graphical pages, including those with text as graphics, may not have a great deal of significant textual material to work with.
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