Digging for gold on the Web: experience with the WebGather

A Web search engine is a powerful tool to find useful information for users on the resourceful World Wide Web. WebGather is a search engine system with a focus on Chinese information discovery, indexing and searching. The authors briefly describe the technology used in WebGather such as heuristic resource discovery algorithm, efficient indexing algorithm, simplified vector space model, effective searching and ranking algorithm, and access interfaces with high usability. Some experience we got from designing and implementing WebGather is provided.