The New York Times “Exploring a ‘Deep Web’ That Google Can’t Grasp” (Alex Wright – Feb 23, 2009) introduces (to me anyway) the “Deep Web” that is many times the size of what we usually consider to be the World Wide Web. Not even Google can get their mighty hands around it, though they and others are making progress.
The “Deep Web” is “…an even vaster Web of hidden data: financial information, shopping catalogs, flight schedules, medical research and all kinds of other material stored in databases that remain largely invisible to search engines.
The challenges that the major search engines face in penetrating this so-called Deep Web go a long way toward explaining why they still can’t provide satisfying answers to questions like “What’s the best fare from New York to London next Thursday?” The answers are readily available — if only the search engines knew how to find them.
Now a new breed of technologies is taking shape that will extend the reach of search engines into the Web’s hidden corners. When that happens, it will do more than just improve the quality of search results — it may ultimately reshape the way many companies do business online.”
Click here to read the entire article.
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