Online Version

Internet Search Engine

Introduction
A web search engin e is designed to search for infor ma tion on the World Wide Web. The sea rch results ar e usually presented in a list of results and are com m only called hits. Th e inform ation ma y consist of web pa ges, im ages, infor mation a nd other ty pes of files. Som e sear ch engines a lso m ine data av a ilable in databases or open director ies. Unlike Web dir ectories, which ar e m ainta ined by hum an editors, sear ch engines opera te algorithmically or ar e a mixture of algorithm ic and hum an input.

A sear ch engine is a set of program s which are used to search for inform ation within a specific realm and collate that infor mation in a database. People often use this ter m in reference to a n Internet search engine, a search engine which is specifically designed to sea rch the Intern et, but search engines ca n a lso be dev ised for offline content, such as a librar y catalog, the conten ts of a persona l har d driv e, or a cata log of m useum collections. Sea rch engines help people to or ganize and display inform ation in a way which m akes it r eadily a ccessible.

Ther e are th ree a spects to a search engine: crawling, indexing, a nd sea rching. When a sear ch engine crawls, it looks for new content which was not present dur ing th e last cr awl, including updates to files and web pages. Then, the program s index the infor ma tion, pulling out specific key words to categor ize it. On th e Internet, for exam ple, indexing relies heav ily on key wor ds in web pages, a nd meta tags which prov ide infor ma tion about the page.

Once th e infor mation h as been indexed, in form ation about how to a ccess it is stored in a da tabase. Som e search engines also store or ca che inform ation to make it easier to r etriev e. When som eone sea rches the data base, it spits out results ranked by relev ance. On wiseGEEK, for exam ple, a sear ch for giraffe will turn up articles related to gir affes, including, of course, Wh at is a Gira ffe?, for th e conv enience of the u ser .

While a ll sear ch engines wor k in simila r wa y s, their usefulness can be quite v ar ied. Search engines rely heav ily on com plex algor ithms to ra nk the relev ance of th eir sear ch results, especially search results for com m on key words. Users tend to grav itate to sea rch engines which r etu rn results they like, with Inter net sites like Google, Yah oo!, Ly cos, and AltaVista war ring for u ser s with v arious features which a re designed to m ake their searches m or e appealing and more relev ant.

Google has m anaged to become so a ssociated with the pr ocess of conducting a web search th at web sea rching is colloquially known as googling, as in let m e google tha t and see wha t com es u p. The Google com pany is actually not v ery pleased with this, a s the com pany fear s tha t lower case use of its na me, along with generic use, could contr ibute to tr adema rk dilution.

Common internet search engine

Sear ch engines ma ke it possible to sift through all of the inform ation online quickly and find what y ou are looking for. A sea rch engine is a website with au tom atic scripts that explore the Inter net constantly , recording what each docum ent contains. When y ou input text into a sear ch engine, it display s links to the documents likely to contain wha t y ou are looking for. There ar e sev era l popula r Internet search engines, and each has its own fea tur es.

Google Google is the m ost used In ter net sear ch engine. One of the features of Google is its uncluttered appeara nce; aside from the Google logo, the front page of th e sea rch engine consists entirely of text and loa ds v er y quickly . Google continua lly adds new tools to its serv ice such as email a nd an online office application. Howev er, these featur es exist behind links so a s not to clutter the fr ont page of the site. In 2 01 0, Google added a new fea tur e called Google Insta nt, which cau ses r esults to appear on th e scr een instantly as y ou ty pe.

Y ahoo! While the fr ont page of Google is sim ple and bare, Yahoo! is the opposite. Yahoo! is a n online por tal for all ty pes of infor mation, and v isitors can v iew wea ther , news h eadlines, photos and popular searches from the front page. A search on the Ya hoo! search engine y ields results deliv er ed by the Bing search engine.

Bing Bing is Microsoft's search engine. Like Google, Bing pr esents itself with a minim al, fast-loa ding interface. The front page featur es a high-r esolution photo backgroun d that ch anges daily . The ba ckgr ound often fea tur es hot-spots that, when triggered by the m ouse pointer, display interesting fa cts abou t the loca tion wher e the photo was taken. Bing attem pts to prov ide r elev an t infor ma tion fr om m any sources. For exam ple, a sear ch on a fam ous singer m ight display a link to their official website, sev eral photos, song clips a nd their m ost recent Twitter posts.

Ask Ask began as Ask Jeev es, a search engin e that used a car toon butler as its m ascot. The m arquee feature of the search engine was its ability to accept qu eries ph rased as plain English sentences, a featu re tha t rem ains today although the butler cartoon ha s been m ostly phased out. For exam ple, the question "Why should I use Ask?" y ields the answer, "It's the thinker 's sea rch en gine," along with icons for y ou to indicate whether the answer was helpful or not. In case the answer is not helpful, Ask also presents relev a nt results from the Web.

Dogpile Dogpile is essentially a sear ch engine for search engines. A search a t Dogpile y ields th e a ggr egated input of a ll of the ma jor sear ch engines: Google, Yah oo!, Ask an d Bing. If y ou a ren't sure which search engine is y our fav orite, or sim ply want to r eceiv e inpu t fr om a ll of th em , Dogpile might be a worthwhile choice.

Types of internet search engine

WebProGuide.com defines an Inter net sear ch engine as a da tabase of Inter net resources tha t people can sea rch throu gh. So are all search engines the sam e? Not at a ll; there are a few v aried strategies used by different search engines. It's im por tant to kn ow these differences, becau se ea ch method ma y y ield different results.

Web Crawlers Web-crawling sear ch engines, also r eferred to as "spiders," utilize specia l progra mm ing designed to index websites and create database entr ies abou t the sites. The software th at keeps these sea rch engines discov er ing new websites is alway s running. Accor ding to Ecomm er ce.Hostip.info, these sea rch engines either index entir e Web pages, specific key wor ds or meta ta gs. Meta tags are short descriptions or key words used to describe the website. Meta ta gs are hidden within the code and undetectable by those v iewing the Web page. Search results from this ty pe of engine ar e often or ganized by the popu lar ity of ea ch search r esu lt, with the m ost popular pages appearing first.

Paid Inclusion This ty pe of sea rch en gine a llows people to pay for spots in their search r esults. Accor ding to RedCarpetWeb.com, most sea rch directories offer paid inclusion. These sites usu ally also index websites for free, but it takes longer. One v ariation of this sear ch engine ty pe is pa y -per-click. These ar e a ctually the ads that a ppea r arou nd y our search r esults, but are often rela ted to the term s y ou'v e searched for.

Directories A directory is differ ent from Web crawlers in that th ey u se hum ans to index websites instea d of program s. Website creators, known as Webma sters, submit their Web addr esses, titles a nd descriptions of the site to the sea rch directory . An editor then rev iews the subm ission and decides whether or not to index the page. Directories ar e often designed for one subject; for exam ple, a photo dir ectory will catalog photogr aphs, while a m edical directory will index Web pa ges

per taining to m edical topics.

Link-based A link-ba sed sear ch engine uses the h y per tex t (links) on websites to jum p around to other websites for indexing. These sea rch engines con tinue following links and ba se search r esults on websites with the m ost links that lead to them. This ty pe of search engine doesn't focus on the key words, filters or meta ta gs the other sea rch engines rely on, nor does it use hum an editors to index its results. These sea rch engines ar e driv ing com panies to cr eate str ategies specifica lly related to Web links in order to ensur e the com pany 's website is indexed am ong th e first sea rch results for a giv en sear ch term .

Advantages of using internet search engine

Sear ch engines prov ide some popular way s of finding inform ation on th e Internet. Th ere is a wide v ariety of search engines and features. Some sear ch engines a re on specific websites, allowing v isitors to the site to sear ch for specific words or phr ases. Other s are broader in scope.

Variety An Internet sea rch can gener ate a v ar iety of sources for infor ma tion. Results from online ency clopedias, news stor ies, univ ersity studies, discussion boards, and ev en personal blogs can com e up in a basic Inter net search. This v ariety allows any one searching for infor ma tion to choose the ty pes of sources th ey would like to use, or to use a v ar iety of sou rces to ga in a greater understanding of a subject.

Precision Sear ch engines do hav e the ability to prov ide refined or more precise results. Putting quotations m ar ks ar ound a set of words will bring up results with the exact sam e wor ds, excluding others. Some sear ch engines, such as Google or Yahoo, enable y ou to specify th e ty pe of web sources to be sear ched. Being able to sear ch m ore pr ecisely allows y ou to cut down on the a mount of infor ma tion gener ated by y our search. Sear ch engines within a website allow y ou to sea rch infor mation only on that website, filter ing out infor ma tion fr om other web sources and giv ing more pr ecision in a user's sea rch for inform ation.

Organization Internet search engines h elp to organize the Internet and indiv idu al websites. Sea rch engines aid in or ganizing the v ast am ount of inform ation that can som etim es be scattered in v arious places on the sam e web page into an or ganized list that can be used m ore easily .

Reference
http://www.wisegeek.com /what-is-a-search -engine.h tm http://www.ehow.com /list_7 2 9492 3 _com m on-internet-search-engines.html