When the local search results appear converged, the user can gradually increase the mutation rate to encourage the spider to explore a larger information space. Such real-time analysis and dynamic relevance feedback are crucial to a timely and comprehensive search process. Similarly, increasing the timeout limit also allows our spider to work harder, i.e., fetching URLs that are more remote or busy. Since we deployed our Java-based spider on our server in Summer 1996, the response from our initial test subjects has been overwhelming. The display window shows the result of the search process dynamically.
Animation is displayed at the upper right-hand corner.
Control panel which allows user to change parameters during the process is located at the upper portion. Search results are summarized at the center of the window.