FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH

This study shows that, for some popular queries, each search engine will retrieve its distinct result. There also exist significant differences among queries in different categories. Since our study is on searching web pages, a natural extension of this research is to study searching news, FTPs, music and video, etc. On the other hand, the sampling queries in this study were some very popular and general queries. To study searching in a specific field, we could concentrate web searches on some of the most-used queries in that domain.

With the evolution of the search engine, keyword searching, linkage analysis and, now, paid for included (PFI) have been implemented in current web search engines. Due to PFI, business companies must pay a search engine company to be placed in the search results of some specific queries, such as travel and shopping. The most famous PFI search engine is Overture (http://www. overture .com). Although it increases the return on investment for a search engine, it may harm our efforts to search for objective information. The impact of PFI on web searching needs be investigated in detail.