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The literature of the evaluation of Internet search engines is reviewed. Although there have been many studies, there has been little consistency in the way such studies have been carried out. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that recall is virtually impossible to calculate in the fast changing Internet environment, and therefore the traditional Cranfield type of evaluation is not usually possible. A variety of alternative evaluation methods has been suggested to overcome this difficulty. The authors recommend that a standardised set of tools is developed for the evaluation of web search engines so that, in future, comparisons can be made between search engines more effectively, and that variations in performance of any given search engine over time can be tracked. The paper itself does not provide such a standard set of tools, but it investigates the issues and makes preliminary recommendations of the types of tools needed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate image search and retrieval problems in selected search engines in relation to Persian writing style challenges.

This study is an applied one, and to answer the questions the authors used an evaluative research method. The aim of the research is to explore the morphological and semantic problems of Persian language in connection with image search and retrieval among the three major and widespread search engines: Google, Yahoo and Bing. In order to collect the data, a checklist designed by the researcher was used and then the data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics.

The results indicate that Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines do not pay enough attention to morphological and semantic features of Persian language in image search and retrieval. This research reveals that six groups of Persian language features include derived words, derived/compound words, Persian and Arabic Plural words, use of dotted T and the use of spoken language and polysemy, which are the major problems in this area. In addition, the results suggest that Google is the best search engine of all in terms of compatibility with Persian language features.

This study investigated some new aspects of the above-mentioned subject through combining morphological and semantic aspects of Persian language with image search and retrieval. Therefore, this study is an interdisciplinary research, the results of which would help both to offer some solutions and to carry out similar research on this subject area. This study will also fill a gap in research studies conducted so far in this area in Farsi language, especially in image search and retrieval. Moreover, findings of this study can help to bridge the gap between the user’s questions and search engines (systems) retrievals. In addition, the methodology of this paper provides a framework for further research on image search and retrieval in databases and search engines.

The purpose of this study is to explore the retrieval effectiveness of three image search engines (ISE) – Google Images, Yahoo Image Search and Picsearch in terms of their image retrieval capability. It is an effort to carry out a Cranfield experiment to know how efficient the commercial giants in the image search are and how efficient an image specific search engine is.

The keyword search feature of three ISEs – Google images, Yahoo Image Search and Picsearch – was exploited to make search with keyword captions of photos as query terms. Selected top ten images were used to act as a testbed for the study, as images were searched in accordance with features of the test bed. Features to be looked for included size (1200 × 800), format of images (JPEG/JPG) and the rank of the original image retrieved by ISEs under study. To gauge the overall retrieval effectiveness in terms of set standards, only first 50 result hits were checked. Retrieval efficiency of select ISEs were examined with respect to their precision and relative recall.

Yahoo Image Search outscores Google Images and Picsearch both in terms of precision and relative recall. Regarding other criteria – image size, image format and image rank in search results, Google Images is ahead of others.

The study only takes into consideration basic image search feature, i.e. text-based search.

The study implies that image search engines should focus on relevant descriptions. The study evaluated text-based image retrieval facilities and thereby offers a choice to users to select best among the available ISEs for their use.

The study provides an insight into the effectiveness of the three ISEs. The study is one of the few studies to gauge retrieval effectiveness of ISEs. Study also produced key findings that are important for all ISE users and researchers and the Web image search industry. Findings of the study will also prove useful for search engine companies to improve their services.

The purpose was to evaluate the effectiveness of Google (as an international search engine) as well as of Parsijoo, Rismoon, and Yooz (as Persian search engines).

In this research, Google search engine as an international search engine, and three local ones, Parsijoo, Rismoon, and Yooz, were selected for evaluation. Likewise, 32 subject headings were selected from the Persian Subject Headings List, and then simulated work tasks were assigned based on them. A total of 192 students from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad were asked to search for the information needed for simulated work tasks in the selected search engines, and then to copy the relevant website URLs in the search form.

The findings indicated that Google, Parsijoo, Rismoon, and Yooz had a significant difference in the precision, recall, and normalized discounted cumulative gain. There was also a significant difference in the effectiveness (average of precision, recall, and NDCG) of these four search engines in the retrieval of the Persian resources.

Users using an efficient search engine will attain more relevant documents, and Google search engine was more efficient in retrieving the Persian resources. It is recommended to use Google as it has a more efficient search.

In this research, for the first time, Google has been compared with local Persian search engines considering the new approach (simulated work tasks).

The World Wide Web's search engines are the main tools for indexing and retrieval of Internet resources today. Comparison and evaluation of their performance is of great importance for system developers and information professionals, as well as end‐users, for the improvement and development of better tools. The paper describes categories and special features of Web‐based databases and compares them with traditional databases. It then presents a review of the literature on the testing and evaluation of Web‐based search engines. Different methodologies and measures used in previous studies are described and their findings are summarised. The paper presents some evaluative comments on previous studies and suggests areas for future investigation, particularly evaluation of Web‐based search engines from the end‐user's perspective.

The intent of this work is to evaluate several generalist and health‐specific search engines for retrieval of health information by consumers: to compare the retrieval effectiveness of these engines for different types of clinical queries, medical specialties and condition severity; and to compare the use of evaluation metrics for binary relevance scales and for graded ones.

The authors conducted a study in which users evaluated the relevance of documents retrieved by four search engines for two different health information needs. Users could choose between generalist (Bing, Google, Sapo and Yahoo!) and health‐specific (MedlinePlus, SapoSaúde and WebMD) search engines. The authors then analysed the differences between search engines and groups of information needs with six different measures: graded average precision (gap), average precision (ap), gap@5, gap@10, ap@5 and ap@10.

The results show that generalist web search engines surpass the precision of health‐specific engines. Google has the best performance, mainly in the top ten results. It was found that information needs associated with severe conditions are associated with higher precision, as are overview and psychiatry questions.

The study is one of the first to use a recently proposed measure to evaluate the effectiveness of retrieval systems with graded relevance scales. It includes tasks from several medical specialties, types of clinical questions and different levels of severity which, to the best of the authors' knowledge, has not been done before. Moreover, users have considerable involvement in the experiment. The results help in understanding how search engines differ in their responses to health information needs, what types of online health information are more common on the web and how to improve this type of search.

The purpose of this paper is to describe UWIRS (Ubiquitous Web Information Retrieval Solution), an agent‐based Web Information Retrieval (WIR) solution designed taking into account the unique features of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the limitations of existing WIR solutions for ubiquitous environments.

UWIRS can offer recommendation services by using the Multi‐Agent Vizier Recommendation Framework (Vizier). Vizier was designed under a generic approach and therefore can provide services to information retrieval applications so these may offer product recommendations that consider several adaptation/personalization dimensions (e.g. user dimension, context, among others).

Overall, the main challenge resides on: location, retrieval, integration and presentation of information from the WWW, quickly and accurately, to satisfy a user's singular information needs.

In UWIRS, agents cooperate in order to retrieve personalized information, considering user needs, goals, preferences and contextual features. UWIRS's agents are responsible for: interpreting user input and adding adaptation information by means of a query enrichment process; identifying and selecting the appropriate data sources taking into consideration the Profile Set (composed of User, Device and Information‐Provider Profiles); executing query routing and the information retrieval process; integrating and filtering the retrieved results; and lastly, coherent presentation of quality and relevant ubiquitous information (anytime, anywhere and anyhow) that satisfies the user's particular information needs and constraints associated to his/her access device.

The use of search engines is the most widely acceptable way for information foraging on the net. Their wide use as an information retrieval tool has created the need for their evaluation as a means of improving their performance. This research attempts to record Greek librarians' views on search engines: their performance and characteristics.

A total of 16 librarians were asked to search for a specific topic using eight search engines; four international (google.com, altavista.com, yahoo.com, exalead.com) and four Greek (google.gr (searching only for Greek text), in.gr, robby.gr, find.gr). Eight questionnaires were completed by each participant; one for every search engine. A total of 128 initial searches were performed by the librarians, followed by 86 further searches with changed search terms. The librarians recorded their experiences in retrieving information and evaluated the first 20 results according to the criteria of precision, relevancy of the retrieved records and the way the results were displayed by each search tool.

Analysis of the results leads to conclusions about librarians' familiarity with search engines and their views on the retrieved information. The results indicated that participants were satisfied by the presentation, the visualization, the quality and value of results and they were very satisfied with the search engines' interfaces. Thus, most retrieved items were relevant and so the degree of precision was satisfactory. Users preferred mainly international search engines rather than Greek search engines. It was evident that most librarians were very satisfied with the performance of the search engines and felt that their queries had been answered successfully.

The paper presents one of the few studies regarding international and Greek search engines and their use by librarians. The study gathered data with regard to the views of Greek librarians on the use of search engines and their characteristics. In addition, it recorded the attitude of librarians to both the search process and subsequent information retrieval, using Greek and international search engines. It compared different search engines and studied parameters like quality, precision, presentation and value of the search results. This research could form the basis of further study of librarians' behavior in the use of search engines for satisfying their information needs and comparison of information retrieval systems.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how to apply traditional information retrieval (IR) evaluation methods based on standards from the Text REtrieval Conference and web search evaluation to all types of modern library information systems (LISs) including online public access catalogues, discovery systems, and digital libraries that provide web search features to gather information from heterogeneous sources.

The authors apply conventional procedures from IR evaluation to the LIS context considering the specific characteristics of modern library materials.

The authors introduce a framework consisting of five parts: search queries, search results, assessors, testing, and data analysis. The authors show how to deal with comparability problems resulting from diverse document types, e.g., electronic articles vs printed monographs and what issues need to be considered for retrieval tests in the library context.

The framework can be used as a guideline for conducting retrieval effectiveness studies in the library context.

Although a considerable amount of research has been done on IR evaluation, and standards for conducting retrieval effectiveness studies do exist, to the authors’ knowledge this is the first attempt to provide a systematic framework for evaluating the retrieval effectiveness of twenty-first-century LISs. The authors demonstrate which issues must be considered and what decisions must be made by researchers prior to a retrieval test.

The purpose of this paper is to present a review on the use of the recall metric for evaluating information retrieval systems, especially search engines.

This paper investigates different researchers’ views about recall metrics.

Five different definitions for recall were identified. For the first group, recall refers to completeness, but it does not specify where all the relevant documents are located. For the second group, recall refers to retrieving all the relevant documents from the collection. However, it seems that the term “collection” is ambiguous. For the third group (first approach), collection means the index of search engines and, for the fourth group (second approach), collection refers to the Web. For the fifth group (third approach), ranking of the retrieved documents should also be accounted for in calculating recall.

It can be said that in the first, second and third approaches, the components of the retrieval algorithm, the retrieval algorithm and crawler, and the retrieval algorithm and crawler and ranker, respectively, are evaluated. To determine the effectiveness of search engines for the use of users, it is better to use the third approach in recall measurement.

The value of this paper is to collect, identify and analyse literature that is used in recall. In addition, different views of researchers about recall are identified.