A Comparison between seven open and Free Search Engines Software

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to compare between seven free and open search engines: phpdig, sphider, Juggernautsearch, Webglimpse, Webinator, Swish-E and Perlfect, in terms of 30 features. A model design was developed to incorporate these features into four packages according to the impact and efficiency of the search engine functions. Each package was then given a weigh from a scale of 100%: searching mechanisms was given 40%, followed by crawler and indexer, searching features and others representing 26%, 20%, and 14%, respectively. Results revealed that phpdig and sphider were the best engines, there were significantly differences (F-test) over other engines according to all features (p=0.021).