Date‐restricted queries in web search engines
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520410570544 |
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| Pages | 420-427 |
| Author | Dirk Lewandowski |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Date-restricted queries
in web search engines
Dirk Lewandowski
The author
Dirk Lewandowski is an Assistant Lecturer in the Department
of Information Science, Heinrich-Heine-University Du
¨sseldorf,
Du
¨sseldorf, Germany.
Keywords
Worldwide web, Search engines, Information searches
Abstract
Search engines usually offer a date-restricted search on their
advanced search pages. But determining the actual update of a
web page is not without problems. Conducts a study testing
date-restricted queries on the search engines Google, Teomaand
Yahoo! Finds that these searches fail to work properly in the
engines examined. Finally, discusses implications of this for
further research and search engine development.
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Introduction
Some studies have shown that search engine users
only seldom use the advanced search options
which all major engines offer. For a recent
discussion of these findings, see Spink (2003) or
Machill et al. (2003). Lewandowski (2004) gives
an overview of the advanced features of the search
engines Teoma, Google, AllTheWeb, Alta Vista,
HotBot and Fireball.
Asking why advanced search features are
seldom used, one finds explanations such as users
not wanting to invest time and brain power in
either expressing their information need or
formulating their queries (Machill et al., 2003,
p. 169). The same study also found that only about
half of search engine users know about Boolean
operators, and only 20 percent of search engine
users use them frequently. Advanced search
interfaces perform only slightly better. Out of all
users, 59 percent know about them and only 14
percent use them regularly (Machill et al., 2003,
pp. 167-9).
This explains why Boolean operators are not
used more often, but it fails to explain why features
like date-restricted searching are not used at all.
Date-restricted queries seem easy to create, and
little or no search experience is required to
understand them. Users might want to conduct a
date-restricted search when looking for recent
documents or “hot topics”. In the case of hot
topics, there are often numerous documents that
deal with older events, rather than current ones.
For example, a user searching for Michael Jackson
might be interested in the “hot topic” of the
allegations against Jackson regarding child abuse.
However, a search engine would list older
documents first that might deal with the desired
topic, but not with the more recent allegations.
There are many cases where date restrictions are
appropriate and desired. If date-restricted queries
worked in web search engines, it would be
worthwhile to add a date range search box on the
simple search pages.
However, there are some difficulties with date-
restricted queries on web search engines. These
will be explained in the first part of this article. On
the other hand some authors complain about the
poor performance of these kinds of queries in the
popular search engines (e.g. Price and Tyburski,
2002). There has been no systematic analysis on
this topic, though. For this reason, the present
study focuses on a comparison between popular
web search engines in regard to their ability to
deliver relevant results from date-restricted
Online Information Review
Volume 28 · Number 6 · 2004 · pp.420-427
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited · ISSN 1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684520410570544
Revised article received 2 September 2004
Accepted for publication 3 September 2004
420
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