Search-engine solution lies in doing homework

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Published: 12:00am, 21 Oct 1999

My company has had a Web site for about two years and, though not hugely popular, it has a regular following because of the niche market to which we cater. We have decided to invest in beefing up our site and maybe focus most of our attention on it.

But we are divided over which search-engine technology to use. A good search function is essential to the success of our information-heavy site. One partner suggested Inktomi for its popularity. Another insisted that we should have a search tool custom-designed for us by a software developer. My third partner and I would appreciate some independent advice.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED I would abandon the custom-designed option. First, there are more good off-the-shelf engines available than any software developer here could match in terms of the amount of work put into them. As a result, what you get will have bugs that will need to be ironed out.

Second, while a local software developer might be able to give you better support initially than a firm located overseas, the chances of him or her being unavailable two years from now are greater than those of a firm like Inktomi going out of business in that time.

Back to Inktomi. It is a great engine used by some big names. The Financial Times is the latest in a line of giants to announce that it will use this technology.

Having said that, Inktomi is by no means your only choice. There are many others such as AltaVista, Lycos, Infoseek, WebCrawler and Ask Jeeves. The latter is getting a following for its ability to handle natural language searches, something of a shortcoming of Inktomi. (To see how natural languages search, go to www.ask.com.) My advice to you and your partners is to research the subject, look objectively at all the options available and then make your calls. That way you all can make an educated and relatively unemotional decision, hopefully in the same direction.

A good place to start would be www.searchen ginewatch.com, which publishes some excellent reviews of search engines and keeps visitors up to date with developments in the area.