Infohiway Surf-N-Search    D    Add URL   

The Infohiway Surf-N-Search engine does some neat things, but is limited in scope. The engine depends entirely on URL submissions for its website data collection and it's relatively new so it has not acquired a large database. One of the neat things about it is the submission process. It is very easy to add URLs and it has an excellent preview capability that includes spell-checking and showing your listing exactly as it will appear in the directory. Your entry doesn't show up instantly because the index is updated weekly, usually on weekends. The URL entry process is reliable and dependable. After you've submitted your URL, Infohiway sends you an e-mail with all the details of your listing. The only problem is that they don't provide a facility for deleting or changing submissions. The search engine itself is quick, but a little quirky. It's hard to anticipate what results you will get when you enter some keywords. This may be because it uses a keyword index for the searches that is defined by the user who entered the submission. Yet this also allows the engine to show relational links which can lead to what you are looking for. Statistics are published on number of visitors and hits, but nothing is disclosed about the number of pages indexed. Infohiway allows webmasters to put this search engine on their own server. A Help page is provided, but don't look for search help here. It mainly is an exposition on the features and benefits of the service. The service offers a quasi-directory called GeoSurfer where you can click on a geographical map or a list of names and it will provide you with an alphabetical listing of the sites in that region. Although my Silicon Valley directory is in the database I could not locate it in this listing. Some information is provided about the Infohiway Server Network, but not much about the company behind it. (5/7/96)