15 Minute Series What is WAIS?


WAIS provides relevancy ranking, to help the user determine which of the returned items will be most useful. WAIS assigns each document with a number ranking that is determined by the number of times a word in the search phrase appears in the document.

In addition, the formula takes into account where in the document a term appears. For instance, using the search term "standardized testing", if the word "testing" appears in the title of a document, it will receive a higher ranking than a document that has the word "testing" within the body of the article, even if the article with the term in the title has a lower overall number of word matches.



[Next] [Previous]




Return to first slide 15 Minute Series Home 15 Minute Series Search


Copyright © 1997 Network Solutions, Inc.
This material may be quoted or reproduced provided appropriate credit is given and copyright notice is retained.