Advancements and trends in the World Wide Web search

The explosive growth of the World Wide Web and its heterogeneity call for powerful and easy to use search tools capable of providing the user with a moderate number of relevant answers. This paper presents an analysis of key aspects of recently developed WWW search methods and tools: search methods, the ranking and grouping of search results; the visual representation of subject trees; database searching, etc. Current trends in WWW searching include topics such as new search methods, natural language processing in search engines, software agents, and the influence of the XML markup language on search efficiency.