SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND
"SEARCH ENGINES YIELD A WORLD OF INFORMATION"
The Internet has sometimes been compared to a gigantic library, wherein all information stored on every computer can be accessed by every other computer wired into the Net. One of the blessings of the Internet is its ability to be cataloged and searched for specific information.
New sites are posted on the Web on a minute-by-minute basis. It is estimated that world wide, as of April, 2010, there were more than 205 million Web sites serving 1.8 billion using the Internet world wide. With that many documents now in storage on servers worldwide, there must be a way to find out where they are and what they contain. In 2008 Google reported cataloging 1 trillion unique URLs. Individual pages probably number in the trillions. At this time there is no single system that catalogs all the data. However, a properly conducted search will give you a good idea of what's available on your specific topic.
The Tools
Internet search tools are far from perfect. Major search engine databases are found to contain only a small percentage of existing Web pages. But it is not size, but relevance, that determines a search engine's value to you.
What's a Search Engine?
A search engine is a program that scans documents for certain keywords (the words you type in a search query) and returns a list of Web pages in which they're found.
When you type in a keyword, you get a list of links containing that key word. Then, it's up to you to follow each link to the listed site and browse through the information to see if it's what you want.
All search engines work in a similar way in that they use programs called spiders, robots, or crawlers to scan the Web and follow links between documents. The pages that spiders collect are placed into a master database or index. Each engine uses its own formula or algorithm to index information. For example, some engines search only titles of pages, others for the first few lines of text, and then others pull every single word for a page.
As the Web matures and gets more sophisticated, and pages are moved or taken out of service, not all the links found by search engines will be valid. Eventually inoperable links are removed, but that can take time.
Because of differing algorithms, the same search in two different search engines can come up with different results. A thorough search involves at least two or more individual search engines (one that does simultaneous multi-engine search) thrown in for good measure.
When you hit a site you like from a search engine, look for that site's list of links or hot links.
How do Search Engines Search?
There are two major kinds of search engines.
Directory Service, typified by Yahoo, are manually created catalogs of Websites that are reviewed and classified by warm and sensitive human beings. When you search Yahoo, you first select a main category and drill down into subcategories until you find the information you're looking for.
Search Engine Technology is used by most directories along with a directory service, meaning that there are several ways to search most sites. Search engines search according to mathematical algorithms, which scan the search engines database for match of keywords or phrases. Sites that contain keywords in its title, or near the top of the page, are likely to show up in a search.
Boolean - AND, OR, NOT
The most popular Web-search technique is known as Boolean searching, and its major words are AND, OR, and NOT. As a substitute for those three words, you can often use the (+) or (-) minus signs in some engines to signify the words AND/OR and NOT.
A search for an exact phrase or a proper name can simply be wrapped in quotes so the engine knows to search for the words in a unit.
Not all search engines accept all Boolean commands in the same way, so it is best to check the individual policy concerning the best way to search.
How do you know if your searches are effective?
Popular Search Engines
WolframAlpha - Computational Knowledge Engine (New)
Today's Wolfram Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. Enter your question or calculation,and Wolfram Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and a growing collection of data to compute the answer.To check on the latest information on searching the Web, check Danny Sullivans Web Site called Search Engine Watch (http://www.searchenginewatch.com).
Metasearch engines such as Metacrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com) give you results from many different search engines at one time, including other metasearch engines.
New sites are posted on the Web on a minute-by-minute basis. It is estimated that world wide, as of April, 2010, there were more than 205 million Web sites serving 1.8 billion using the Internet world wide. With that many documents now in storage on servers worldwide, there must be a way to find out where they are and what they contain. In 2008 Google reported cataloging 1 trillion unique URLs. Individual pages probably number in the trillions. At this time there is no single system that catalogs all the data. However, a properly conducted search will give you a good idea of what's available on your specific topic.
The Tools
Internet search tools are far from perfect. Major search engine databases are found to contain only a small percentage of existing Web pages. But it is not size, but relevance, that determines a search engine's value to you.
What's a Search Engine?
A search engine is a program that scans documents for certain keywords (the words you type in a search query) and returns a list of Web pages in which they're found.
When you type in a keyword, you get a list of links containing that key word. Then, it's up to you to follow each link to the listed site and browse through the information to see if it's what you want.
All search engines work in a similar way in that they use programs called spiders, robots, or crawlers to scan the Web and follow links between documents. The pages that spiders collect are placed into a master database or index. Each engine uses its own formula or algorithm to index information. For example, some engines search only titles of pages, others for the first few lines of text, and then others pull every single word for a page.
As the Web matures and gets more sophisticated, and pages are moved or taken out of service, not all the links found by search engines will be valid. Eventually inoperable links are removed, but that can take time.
Because of differing algorithms, the same search in two different search engines can come up with different results. A thorough search involves at least two or more individual search engines (one that does simultaneous multi-engine search) thrown in for good measure.
When you hit a site you like from a search engine, look for that site's list of links or hot links.
How do Search Engines Search?
There are two major kinds of search engines.
Directory Service, typified by Yahoo, are manually created catalogs of Websites that are reviewed and classified by warm and sensitive human beings. When you search Yahoo, you first select a main category and drill down into subcategories until you find the information you're looking for.
Search Engine Technology is used by most directories along with a directory service, meaning that there are several ways to search most sites. Search engines search according to mathematical algorithms, which scan the search engines database for match of keywords or phrases. Sites that contain keywords in its title, or near the top of the page, are likely to show up in a search.
Boolean - AND, OR, NOT
The most popular Web-search technique is known as Boolean searching, and its major words are AND, OR, and NOT. As a substitute for those three words, you can often use the (+) or (-) minus signs in some engines to signify the words AND/OR and NOT.
A search for an exact phrase or a proper name can simply be wrapped in quotes so the engine knows to search for the words in a unit.
Not all search engines accept all Boolean commands in the same way, so it is best to check the individual policy concerning the best way to search.
How do you know if your searches are effective?
- Is its operation easy to grasp?
- Did it get a lot of accurate results
- Were the first 10 results relevant?
Popular Search Engines
WolframAlpha - Computational Knowledge Engine (New)
Today's Wolfram Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. Enter your question or calculation,and Wolfram Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and a growing collection of data to compute the answer.To check on the latest information on searching the Web, check Danny Sullivans Web Site called Search Engine Watch (http://www.searchenginewatch.com).
Metasearch engines such as Metacrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com) give you results from many different search engines at one time, including other metasearch engines.
- Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.com) is a good example of a search engine that has introduced ways to help users focus on what they are looking for. Search for something like travel, and on the results page, you'll be shown related searches. These are other popular searches that contain the word ˜travel- click on any of them, and you can easily perform a more specific and related search. It's a useful feature, and one that has shown up on several other search engines. AltaVista is consistently one of the largest search engines on the Web, in terms of pages indexed. It's comprehensive coverage and wide range of power searching commands makes it a particular favorite among researchers.
- Ask Jeeves for Kids ( http://www.ajkids.com/) A nice search engine that allows kids to ask simple questions and get sources off from the Web which answer their questions.
- Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com), uses a metasearch interface which supports many of the Webs most popular search tools. Dogpile has links to a variety of online services.
- Excite (http://www.excite.com) is one of the most popular search services on the web. It offers a medium sized index and integrates non-web material such as company information and sports scores into its results.
- Google (http://www.google.com) is a new search engine site that bases its results on link popularity to rank web sites, not on a crawler type search engine. This can be especially helpful in finding good sites in response to general searches. Google has gained wide-spread praise for its high relevancy results.
- Go / Infoseek (http://www.infoseek.com) Go is a portal site produced by Infoseek and Disney. It offers portal features such as personalization and free e-mail, plus the search capabilities of the former Infoseek search services, which has now been folded into Go. Searchers will find that Go consistently provides quality results in response to many general and broad searches. It also has an impressive human-compiled directory of web sites.
- Hotbot (http://www.hotbot.com) is a favorite among researchers due to its large index of the web and many power searching features.
- Lycos (http://www.lycos.com) started out as a search engine, depending on listings that came from spidering the web. In April 1999, it shifted to a directory model similar to Yahoo.
- Microsoft Network (http://www.msn.com) Microsofts MSN Search Service is a LookSmart-powered directory of web sites, with secondary results that come from AltaVista.
- Netscape Search (http://www.netscape.com) results come primarily from the Open Directory and Netscape™ own Smart Browsing™ database, which does an excellent job of listing official web sites. At the Netcenter portal site, other search engines are also featured.
- Open Directory (http://www.dmoz.org), is a volunteer run directory that lets other search engines use its human-powered results. While Netscape actually owns Open Directory, it offers the data free of charge to other search engines.
- Savvy Search (http://www.savvysearch.com) is a metasearch engine that searches the major searge on servers worldwide, there must be a way to find out where they are and what they contain. At this time there is no single system that catalogs all the data. However, a properly conducted search will give you a good idea of whats available on your specific topic.
- Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com), now a multimillion-dollar company, started out as a humble collection of the owners favorite Websites. Before long, word of the popular Website spread and Yahoo was deluged with requests from new Web designers asking to be linked to the site. Today, Yahoo is a major Web portal used to search for absolutely everything. Yahoo is the webs most popular search service and has a well-deserved reputation for helping people find information easily.