About Vancouver Webpages'

jump! is a search tool with a rather single-minded purpose - it finds Website homepages. For example, if you search for "kodak" you will get www.kodak.com but not a lot of pages with people talking about Kodak film.

How jump! Works

jump! first looks in its database for a match. If it finds only one match, you are jumped right to the page (using an http redirect).
If jump! finds more than one match, they are listed. Sometimes an apparantly identical listing appears twice. Entries are preceded by a hidden comment which is part of the search key, so that www.alstrucks.com "Al's Trucks Inc" will be keyed as "alstrucks" and as "al's".

If jump! can't find a match in it's database, it guesses. It will typically try "www.name.com" and "www.name.org", and also try some case folding and punctuation folding, eg. mapping "London Drugs" to "london-drugs". If it finds a match like this, it updates its database automatically.

If jump! fails to guess a site, it presents the user with a more detailed form including a netfind and InterNIC search. These may give the user clues as to a possible Website. If the user then uses jump! to try the new URL, then it will be added to the database if successful.

What keys does jump! use?

jump! uses the following keys:

The domain title, eg. "kodak" from "www.kodak.com"
The first word in the homepage title that is not "Welcome', "Index", or a preposition.
Any word in the title that isn't in a dictionary.

So "Welcome to Amazing Inc, manufacturers of Wizzo putty" would be keyed under "amazing" and "wizzo".

Where does jump! get its data from?

jump! gets URLs from people using it. It is also fed by a robot that scans InterNIC and netfind information looking for Web servers.

Webpages Robots