To read this content please select one of the options below:

Web impact factors and search engine coverage

Mike Thelwall (School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wolverhampton, Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1SB)

Journal of Documentation

ISSN: 0022-0418

Article publication date: 1 April 2000

1486

Abstract

Search engines index only a proportion of the web and this proportion is not determined randomly but by following algorithms that take into account the properties that impact factors measure. A survey was conducted in order to test the coverage of search engines and to decide whether their partial coverage is indeed an obstacle to using them to calculate web impact factors. The results indicate that search engine coverage, even of large national domains is extremely uneven and would be likely to lead to misleading calculations.

Keywords

Citation

Thelwall, M. (2000), "Web impact factors and search engine coverage", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 56 No. 2, pp. 185-189. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410010803801

Publisher

:

MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 2000, MCB UP Limited

Related articles