I'm working on a search engine for a web application I am developing and realized I really didn't know that much about making search engines. I've taken a bit of AI & Expert Systems in school but never really run into any books specifically on developing search engines. Do any such books exist? If so, recommendations?
This article gives a wonderful overview of the challenges:<p>"Why Writing Your Own Search Engine Is Hard"
<a href="http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=988407" rel="nofollow">http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=988407</a><p>(site is down currently.) google cache:
<a href="http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:13tlOSQwtjAJ:queue.acm.org/detail.cfm%3Fid%3D988407+writing+a+search+engine+is+hard&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=safari" rel="nofollow">http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:13tlOSQwtjAJ:queue.acm.o...</a>
There are some ACM/IEEE journals that have relevant papers, but you have to ask yourself: is reinventing the wheel what you really want to be doing? Given that there are lots of available COTS solutions, shouldn't you be focusing on things that are unique to your app?<p>(Needless to say, if the search engine needs <i>are</i> unique to your app, and a COTS solution isn't viable, you might want to bring in someone with relevant expertise.)