{
  "id": "1998-july-berkman-writes-flooding-engines",
  "slug": "1998-july-berkman-writes-flooding-engines",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1998-july-berkman-writes-flooding-engines.html",
  "year": 1998,
  "month": "July",
  "monthNum": 7,
  "headline": "BERKMAN WRITES: Flooding engines",
  "kicker": "",
  "author_name": "",
  "author_title": "",
  "affiliation": "",
  "summary": "The article explains two main categories of web research tools: raters and robots, and describes how hierarchical indexes like Yahoo and LookSmart allow users to search by drilling down through progressively narrower categories.",
  "keywords": [
    "search",
    "hierarchy",
    "categories"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Technology"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "World Wide Web",
    "Internet"
  ],
  "full_text": "ON THE INTERNET, THERE ARE TWO MAJOR CATEGORIES OF WEB RESEARCH TOOLS: RATERS AND ROBOTS. ON YAHOO, THE MOST WELL-KNOWN OF THE HIERARCHICAL INDEXES, SEARCHERS LOOK FOR SITES BY \"DRILLING DOWN\" - BY FIRST SELECTING A BROAD CATEGORY, VIEWING THE NARROWER SUBCATEGORIES, THEN CHOOSING UNTIL THE DESIRED SITES ARE LOCATED.\n\nANOTHER, NEWER SITE THAT WORKS THE SAME WAY IS CALLED LOOKSMART (HTTP://WWW.LOOKSMART.COM).",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
  "similar": [
    {
      "slug": "1996-may-tech-tips-a-guide-to-search-engines-seek-and-ye-shall-find",
      "score": 0.269
    },
    {
      "slug": "1998-june-beyond-plain-boolean",
      "score": 0.168
    },
    {
      "slug": "1995-october-being-inventive-go-on-line-to-find-designs",
      "score": 0.148
    },
    {
      "slug": "1998-april-on-the-internet-search-for-news-not-noise",
      "score": 0.131
    },
    {
      "slug": "1995-december-bits-bytes-and-barks",
      "score": 0.121
    }
  ],
  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1998-july-berkman-writes-flooding-engines.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1998-july-berkman-writes-flooding-engines.json"
}