Excite@Home Plans Search Engine to Index the Entire Web

Computergram International, August 4, 1999

Hard on the heels of Dell Computer Corp's announcement that it will invest in Norwegian search engine company Fast Search & Transfer ASA, Excite@Home Corp has announced its own plans for a search engine to index every page of the world wide web. Both announcements follow a stinging study by scientists at the NEC Research Institute. The researchers found that Northern Lights, AltaVista and HotBot cover only about 15% of the web, and that their rivals cover far less. The study was published in Science in July and received plenty of attention from the industry and mainstream press. Fast and Excite@Home are now indulging in a little spin control.

"Search engines have recently been accused of not being able to keep up," admitted Excite@Home's director of search products and services, Kris Carpenter. "We are introducing a new search architecture capable of visiting and chronicling every single URL on the world wide web. The new architecture is scalable and designed to keep pace with the rapid growth of web pages published." The revamped search engine is slated for a mid-August rollout. Excite@Home also plans to introduce what techniques to improve the quality of search results. The idea is for Excite@Home to be able to identify "top quality" web content and boost the visibility of that content in a search results page. Let's hope it's more successful than AltaVista's abortive efforts at "pay-per-hits".