Search Engines

Sara Khalid Suliman

Outlines:
• Definition of search engines.
• History of search engines.
• Important of search engines.
• Type of search engines.
• How to use search engines.
Definition of search engines
• A search engine is a web-based tool that enables
users to locate information on the World Wide
Web. Popular examples of search engines are
Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Search.
Cont…
• It uses the keywords to search for documents
that relate to these key words and then put the
result in order of relevance to the topic that was
searched for.
 How search engine work
User enter query
and spiders go
to work Search index

Users choose among Search engine

Display results
search results software
Cont…
• Indexes:
are data structures designed to improve search
efficiency.
Cont…
• Search engines utilize automated software
application (referred to as robots, bots, or
spiders) that travel along the Web,
following links from page to page, site to
site.

• The information gathered by the spiders is

used to create a searchable index of the
Web.
Some Example of Search Engine
There is differing views on strategy:
• Google.
• Yahoo!.
• Ask.
History of Search Engines
• the first tools used for searching in the internet
was Archie in 1990 by Alan Emtage.

• In 1990, two new programs Vercnica and

Jughead.

• In September 1 993, W3Ctalog was the first web

primitive search engines.
Importance of Search Engine
• Search engine are important because over 8 billion web pages available,
it would be impossible to search for the information that is specifically
needed.

• This is why search engine are used to filter the information that is on
the internet and transform it into results that each individual can easily
access and use within the matter of seconds.
Search engine placement
• Search engine return lists of links based on search
words entered by user.

• Placement how high a web page is in the listing is

critically important in generating traffic from
search engines.

• Most users only look at 3 – 10 items in search

output before changing words.
Types of Search Engines:
• There are three main types of search engine tools:
1. Crawler based search engines.
2. Search directories or indexes.
3. Specialty search engines
4. Meta search engines.
Crawler based search engines
• These type of search engine use a “spider or crawler” to search the
internet.
• The crawler digs through individual web pages, pulls out keywords
and then adds the pages to the search engine’s database. Google and
Yahoo are examples of crawler search engines.
• Crawler based search engines are good when you have a specific
search topic.
Google

• Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey

Brin.

• Most popular search engine.

• The homepage of Google has a button labeled.

When user types in a search and clicks on the
button, the user is directly taken to the first
search result.
Cont…
• Google has various special features, which
include weather, unit conversion, currency
conversion, calculator, maps, etc.
Yahoo!
• Yahoo was founded by David Filo and Jerry Yang.

• Yahoo operates a portal the provides the latest news,

entertainment, and sports information. The portal also gives users
access to other Yahoo services like Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Maps,
Yahoo Finance , Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Messenger.

Yahoo! Offers social networking services such as My web, Yahoo!

Personals, and Flickr.
Ask.com
• A question and answer focused search engine.

• Founded in 1998 by Gruener and David

Warthen in Berkeley, California
Specialty search engines
• They help the user search in different areas in
specific types of lists that are specialized in
specific topic that would be useful for narrowing
down the searching process.

• Example:
1. Askjeeves(Question and answer search
engine).
2. Medhunt(Provides only medical information).
 Directories
• Directories depend on human editors to create their listings or the database.

• Yahoo Directory, Open Directory and Look Smart are few examples.
Hybrid Search Engines
• Hybrid Search Engines are search engine that use both crawler
based searches and directory searches to obtain their result.
• Example:
1. Yhoo.com
2. Google.com
Meta search engines
• A Meta search engine is a tool that helps to locate information available
via the WWW.

• It provide a single interface that enables users to search many different

search engine, indexes and databases.

• Are search engines that combine all the results from other search
engines into one big list.

• Examples:
1. Metacrawler.
2. Dogpile.
3. savvySearch.
 resources

Search engine Search engine Search engine

Meta search engine

query response
Search engine Architecture
• The search engine architecture comprises of
three basic layers listed below:
1. Content collection and refinement.
2. Search core.
3. User and application interfaces.
How to succeed with SE
• Make your pages easier to index

• Make links between your pages use metadata.

Advantages of using search engine
1. Easy to get different information from different topics.
2. Determine specifically information.
3. Sorting and adding value to the information.
Disadvantages of using search engine
1. Too many websites visitors.
2. Too many websites leads.
Boolean searches
• Boolean searches use the “Boolean operators”
(And, Or, Not and Near) to combine words and
make the search topic more specific and limited
for user.
• Using “or” between search phrase will search
term separately.
or
• A “-” before a word in a search will exclude
the word from search
-
mark.
search for phrase between the quotation “”
Placing words between quotation mark will
• A “+” before a word in a search will locate for
documents which definitely contain the word
+
How to use search engines
Examples
• +BLAK+BLUE : The search results will contain documents which
contain the word black and the blue.
• BLAK-BLUE: The search results will contain documents which
contain the word black but not the word blue.
• BLAK BLUE : The search results will contain documents which
include the phrase black blue
• BLAK OR BLUE : The search results will contain documents
which contain the term black or the term blue.
Conclusion
• The usefulness of search engine depends on the
relevance of the results it gives back.
• While there may be millions of web pages that
include a particular word or phrase, some pages
may be more relevant, popular, or authoritative
than others.
The End