Buying a Search Appliance to reverse engineer Google algos

[blaze]

I assume that this isn't possible.

Therefore I also assume that the search appliances are necessarily handicapped.

Anyone know any different?

[macdave]

I know a couple sites that use the search appliance. The results are quite different that what you get from a Google "site:" search.

Since the appliance is designed to index a controlled set of documents, I'd expect that it doesn't contain many of the spam-detecting features of the recent algos. Probably just a stripped-down algo circa 2002.

[Lord Majestic]

It will be pointless to do since as it was said there is no need for many algorithms to be in place there. And don't underestimate task at hand -- just how many people learn assembly and reverse engineering these days? New grads don't get to understand fine low level details of how things work because high level languages don't let them access those.

[Tapolyai]

I think it would be an excellent exercise even just for the brain expansion.

Go buy one or two, then let us know what you have discovered, at high level of course. Wouldn't want to steal anything propriatery or such.

Even if the code is from 2002, I think it would be fun.

[mrMister]

As the guy that does Google Watch says, the main Google search engine isn't especially effective at site search (pagerank doesn't transfer particularly well to enclosed sites).

The Google Appliance is especially designed to work well with an enclosed site, so its algorithms will be different in some ways.