Research
&
Analysis
Skills
Chapter 2
Search
engines
Search Engines
➢ A tool providing searchable access to the text of millions of freely accessible Web
pages.
➢ An Internet-based search box that provides text-match
searching of its database of text indexed Web pages.
➢ Search results are ranked according to internal ranking
algorithms.
➢ The search results may be a mix of web pages, images, and other
types of files which referred to as search engine results pages
(SERPs).
➢ The purpose of a search engine is to extract requested information from the huge
database of resources available on the internet.
➢ Search engines become an important day to day tool for finding the required
information without knowing where exactly it is stored.
Search Engines
Internet usage has been increased in recent days with the easy to
use search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo!
There are different types of search engines to get the information
you are looking for.
➢ You might have heard of search engines like: (Google, Ask
Jeeves, Yahoo, AOL Search, AltaVista, MSN Search….. ).
➢ There are lots of other excellent search engines on the Internet
that you may never have heard of!
➢ We will explain different types of search engines and purpose of them.
How do Search Engines Work?
1 3
2 Ranking
Crawling Indexing
1 Crawling
➢ Search engine databases are selected and built by computer
robot programs called spiders.
➢ They find the pages by following the links in the pages they
already have in their database.
➢ For new web page: URL sent by some human to the search
engine companies as a request that the new page be included in
database.
➢ All search engine companies offer ways to do this.
2 Indexing
➢ After spiders find pages, they pass them on to another
computer program for" indexing”.
➢ This program identifies the text, links, and other content in the
page and stores it in the search engine database's files
➢ So that the database can be searched by keyword, and the page
will be found if your search matches its content.
3 Ranking
➢ Search results are ranked according to internal relevance-
ranking algorithms. which means that results are ordered by
most relevant to least relevant.
Classification of Search engines based on
how it works
1. Crawler based search engines
2. Human-powered directories
3. Meta search engines
4. Other special search engines
Crawler based search engines
➢ All crawler-based search engines use a crawler bot or spider to crawl and index new
content in the search database.
➢ Most of the popular search engines are crawler-based search engines
➢ Examples: ( Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, AOL and Ask)
Most Popular Search Engines in the World Right Now.
1. Google
➢ About 80% search queries on the internet. Dominating the mobile/t
ablet search engines. It has a disadvantages of tracking the users.
2. Bing
➢ The second search engines used today with millions of queries every day.
➢ It is Microsoft’s attempt to challenge Google in search engine.
➢ It is the default search engines in windows and internet browsers
3. Yahoo
➢ One of the most popular email providers with a 4% of search engine
market share
4.Ask.com
➢ Formerly known as Ask Jeeves
➢ Search result is based on question/answer format.
➢ It also has the general search engine functionality but the results returned lack quality c
ompared to Google or even Bing and Yahoo.
5. Baidu
➢ It is one of the popular search engine in China.
➢ Was founded in 2000. Its market share has been increasing daily by a huge amount.
6. DuckDuckGo
➢ One of the most popular and user-friendly. It is the future of search
engines.
➢ It has a huge advantage, a clean interface, it does not track any user
, and it is not fully loaded with ads and has several nice features.
7. Yandex.ru
➢ It is the most popular search engine in Russia with about 65% market
share in that country.
8. Excite
➢ An online service portal website that provides internet services like email, search engine
, news, instant messaging and weather updates with a .005% of market share.
9. YouTube
➢ It holds the top 2 position in the search engine ranking
➢ It receives billions logged in users per month
➢ Feeds over billions of hours of video each day to users .
10. Facebook
➢ Introduced in 2006 to the public, before it was only accessible by
students.
➢ It is one of the highest social media search engines right now with
billions of users.
➢ It also gives businesses and advertisers incredible market access and trends.
11. Quora
➢ It is based question-and-answer search engine website.
➢ Questions are asked, answered, edited, and organized by its community of users in the
form of opinions.
3. Metasearch Engine:
➢ It is a wonderful tool that takes your search expression and sends
around to multiple search engines and then returns the results to
you in categories.
➢ It is a finding tool that does not have its own database. Instead, it
sends to several other search engines and then compiles the
results on a single screen or in multiple frames or windows.
➢ Meta Search Engines use both crawler based and manual indexing
for listing the sites in search results.
2. Human powered directories:
➢ A directory is a tool for browsing selected sites or getting started in
a new subject area.
➢ The classification of sites is typically done by human editors, and
the sites are searchable by the category names, site titles, and brief
site descriptions.
➢ Examples: [(Open Directory, Librarians’ Internet Index (LII), Yahoo!)]
Specialized
Search Engines
Ad-bidding engine
Answer engine
News Search Engine
Opinion engine
Invisible Web
Ad-bidding engine
➢ It is search engine with database of paid ads.
➢ The ranking of results(ads) is determined by which company is
willing to pay the most per click.
➢ The highest bidders are listed in the top spot, followed by those
that bid lesser amounts.
➢ Examples: [Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing,
Kanoodle, Miva]
Answer engine
➢ It is specialized engine with database of questions and matching answers.
➢ It provides just one answer for each question.
➢ Examples: [Ask.com, Fact City ,Shortcuts]
News Search Engine
➢ Its database indexes only pages from news Web sites.
➢ Examples: [Yahoo! News, Google News, Feedster, Daypop, Alternate Terms, blog
search engine, headline search engine, RSS search engine]
Opinion engine
➢ It indexes a collection of discussion forums, Usenet newsgroups, or
other content based on individual opinion.
➢ Examples: [Google Groups, Epinions]
Invisible Web
➢ Pages and links that excluded from most search engines by policy or
because search engine spiders cannot access them are referred to as the
"Invisible Web“ what you don't see in search engine results.
➢ Consists of Web sites, pages, and other sources that are not
indexed by search engines or included in their databases.
➢ Invisible web, dark matter, deep Web,
➢ Examples: [Clinton-era State Department documents, Citations
from Agricola, (hidden in a database)]
Other Resources
➢ Encyclopedias:
o A great resource for research
o Example: Britannica – www.britannica.com
➢ Libraries:
oAnother place to find lots of useful information.
oExamples:
1-Boston Public Library’s database
2-New York Public Library’s Student Page
