On May 8, 7:38 pm, yf...@vtn1.victoria.tc.ca (Malcolm Dew-Jones)
wrote:
> joel garry (joel-ga...@home.com) wrote:
>
> : I think google (...snip...)
> : ... And two identical searches _still_ may not give consistent
> : results.
>
> Since when is google supposed to give consistent results?
>
> That would be a _bad_ thing.
>
> Any algorithm that can tries to reduce terabytes of data into one useful
> page of information must be making a lot of assumptions. If a result page
> doesn't change pretty frequently then that would be the sign of a terrible
> algorithm.


I am all for giving exact and consistent results every time...

If we lived in a constant, immovable, static world that is!

Just freeze the clock, and the Google results will be completely
consistent...

Last time I saw a search engine with consistent results was Altavista.
It had a piece of information gathering software (called "scooter")
which took a month to traverse the www. Google results are almost real-
time.

-RFH