Firms Push for a More Searchable Federal Web

A wide array of public information remains largely invisible to the search engines, and therefore to the general public, because it is held in such a way that the Web search engines of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft can't find it and index it. Not surprisingly, Yahoo and Microsoft officials agree that people would be better served if more public information became accessible to their search engines. The trouble, as the search engines see it, is that most Web users have become accustomed to finding information by typing queries into one of the engines -- and if they don't find it there, they give up. To make those databases visible to search engines would require the federal government to make each item into a Web page and then to provide a list of those Web page addresses to the search engines. Some federal officials have grumbled, however, that Google is making this push purely for financial reasons: The more that is available to search engines, the more people will use search engines, letting Google show advertising to more people.