Hi All,

For some time now I have not found Google to be doing quite what I
want when I perform searches on slide rule related topics.

1. I find returned multiple references to the same site annoying.

2. I find I get a large number of hits on sites which have no
connection with slide rules whatsoever, even when the "+" is used.

3. Although the information returned by the search is highlighted in
bold, on clicking the relevant link the displayed page does not have
the search string highlighted so that on a large page sometimes it is
quite difficult to find the relevant section.

4. Often quite "good" hits are several pages deep and may never be
found.

5. I would be quite happy to have all the hits displayed on one page.
(Google has a maximum of 100 per page so perhaps I'm nit-picking!).

Having said that, the Google Search Engine is very sophisticated,
getting better all the time, and usually does provide a large number
of valid hits although often several pages down the line.

In this one small area (slide rules) though, I think that I can give
Google a run for its money. This may sound a tad ambitious
considering that Google has over 13,000 employees, many of whom are
fine programmers!

I have created a system that deals only with slide rule sites. I run
a web crawler (variously called bots,spiders, webots etc., etc) once
a month which currently indexes over 40 slide rule web sites. (I
have no idea how often Google runs its crawlers - probably
continually but even then at any one time it indexes less than 20% of
the net).

My index can be searched in a similar fashion to that of my other
software.

A matching site is returned once only.

Multiple references to your search string for all matching sites may
be requested but the default is to return the first match on a site
and then move on to further sites.

All searched for strings are highlighted in red and on clicking the
returned link to the site, the searched for strings are also
highlighted in red on the returned page. (Optionally you may click
the "direct link" to the authors page which then, like Google, will
not have the searched for strings highlighted).

The "Help File" gives details of the use of this software, together
with a list of the sites currently indexed.
This list will be increased as I become aware of more sites.

It may be found at: http://sliderules.lovett.com and click
on "Net Search".

I find it useful. I hope you do.

Regards,

Rod