Inadequate Web Information Retrieval on the Web
Search engines do not index some content on the web, including web-accessed databases. In fact, according to the OCLC Online Computer Library Center's Research, only 35% of web sites are publicly available and searchable via search engines; the other sites are private, provisional, or not accessible to search engines. Search engines provide access to web sites by means of programs called "spiders" and "crawlers," which index the static web pages on the web.
A growing concern is the bias of web search engines. Researchers have confirmed that "many leading search engines give prominence to popular, wealthy, and powerful sites at the expense of others" and that "the rich and powerful clearly can influence search engine tendencies; their dollars can, and in some ways already do, play a decisive role in what sites a given search retrieves" (for an excellent article on this topic, see Lucas Introna and Helen Nissenbaum, January 2000, "Defining the Web: The Politics of Search Engines," Computer (IEEE) Vol. 33(1), pp. 54-62).
Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, another issue to consider with respect to government-sponsored information and research is the fact that some of it "is disappearing from government web sites, much of it in the name of national security." For an article about this topic, see Marylaine Block, 6 December 2002, "Disappearing Data," Ex Libris, Issue Number 161, [Internet, WWW], ADDRESS: http://marylaine.com/exlibris/xlib161.html [Accessed: 14 September 2006].
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