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In this paper we review studies on the growth of the Internet
and technologies which are useful for information search and
retrieval on the Web. We present data on the Internet from
several different sources, e.g., current as well as projected
number of users, hosts and Web sites. Although the numerical
figures vary, overall trends cited by the sources are
consistent and point to exponential growth in the past and in
the coming decade. As such, it is not surprising that about
85% of Internet users surveyed claim to be using search engines and
search services to find specific information of interest.
The same surveys show, however, that users are not satisfied
with the performance of the current generation of search
engines; the slow speed of retrieval, communication delays,
and poor quality of retrieved results (e.g., noise and broken
links) are commonly cited problems. We discuss the development
of new techniques which are targeted to resolve some of the
problems associated with Web-based information retrieval and
speculate on future trends.
By: Mei KOBAYASHI and Koichi TAKEDA
Published in: Computing Surveys , volume 32, (no 2), pages 144-173 in 2000
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