(2003-06-17) Tim Bray Search Engines

Tim Bray [kicks off](http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/06/15/On Search) some notes on Search Engine history and requirements. So far, I'm unsatisfied. Each of the ones I've looked at has a problem (lightly/poorly maintained, scalability problems, lack of internationalization, awkward API).

Follow-up - very few people use Advanced Search, they use an avg of 1.3 words in a search query, and they only look at the first screen (so put lots of results on it!). At MedScape we also hid searches behind HyperKeywords, but didn't do a good job of promoting them enough, I think.