Language options of Internet search tools

TÓTH Erzsébet

Könyvtári Figyelő (Library Review) vol. 16. (52.) 2006. no. 2. pp. 303–311.

Following international examples (survey of Judit Bar Ilan and Tatyana Gutman, 2002), the author tested the language options of English and Hungarian search engines in 2005 in order to see the capability of these tools (e.g. Altavista, Google, AlltheWeb) to achieve a more accurate linguistic interpretation of searches. The results show that the Hungarian tools only deal with the peculiarities of the Hungarian language to some extent, while the English language search engines show serious deficiencies when dealing with Hungarian search terms. English language search engines work better with English terms, including the options of truncation and searching for synonyms, but they are less efficient in dealing with accents which is an important feature of Hungarian language texts.