Provider: Architext Software
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: Robot, also takes human submissions
Editorial function: Yes, for the "NetDirectory"
section
Annotated: Yes, from the page itself for the searchable index, and
by excite editors for the "NetDirectory"
Notable feature: Size of index
FAQ: Yes, for the product, on the home page under
"Excite Search." Yes, for the search engine, on the home page under
"Help."
excite indexes millions of Web pages and the Usenet news articles posted during the previous two weeks. Its Intelligent Concept Extraction (ICE) search engine is based on concept searching, but also supports Boolean AND/OR/NOT searching. Users may search by "concept" or key words. Concept based searching is easier and can yield larger retrieval, but can be confusing in that it sometimes returns sites that are not related to the query. excite offers relevance feedback, returning different colored icons based on the level of relevance, and provides percentage confidence ratings. It allows the user to click on the relevance icon next to an item, to return other similar items (query by example). It also offers the user the option of retrieval by site, with sites listed hierarchically. Users should read the searching FAQs carefully to use the system to its fullest advantage.