Frequently Asked Questions
What is Lycos?
Lycos (tm) is the catalog of the Internet. The Lycos web explorer
searches the World Wide Web every day (including Gopher and FTP
space), building a database of all the web pages it finds.
The index is updated weekly.
The Pursuit search engine provides probabilistic retrieval from this
catalog, taking a user's query and returning a sorted list of hits
(the list is sorted by match score, and only documents with scores
above the threshhold are retrieved).
How can I see more than 10 hits?
You need a browser that can use forms, then you run the
Forms-based Lycos
Search and choose the maximum number of hits.
How can I search with Lynx?
If you are using the regular search page, Lycos search,
use the s command in Lynx, type your query term(s), and hit
return.
How can I put my own URLs into the Lycos Catalog?
Again, using a forms-capable browser, use the
Lycos
URL registration page.
It takes a few days to a week for newly registered items to be
added to the index.
How can I get my old URLs out of the Lycos Catalog?
You can put in a deletion request using the
Lycos
URL deletion page. This can take up to a week to process, since
the databases are currently updated weekly.
Why is Lycos so slow?
Lycos is actually very fast. Searches on medium-frequency words
against the 1.49 million URL database take only a few seconds,
BUT we currently have only 3 computers handling up to 56,000
users per week. During peak times the load goes had been as high as 80
(meaning that 80 processes are competing for the CPU at any one time).
So it seems slow because you're sharing it with 55,999 other people.
Good times to search are before 11am EST, or after 6pm. See the
graph of Lycos usage
by hour.
To cope with the load, we've been forced to limit access to the
catalog when the load average exceeds 15.0. We are adding new hardware and
new servers soon. Two Pentium systems have arrived and are being
configured, and two more Sparcs are on order.
back to the Lycos Home Page.
Copyright © 1995 by Carnegie Mellon University
Last updated 10-Jan-95