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Search Engines

Done by:Afra Alkhajah

Maitha Mohammed

What are search engines?

It is basically a type of program that uses keywords to search for documents that relate to these keywords and then puts the results found in the order of relevance to the topic that was searched for.

Examples :

Google

Alta Vista

Importance of search engines

Search engines are important because with over 8 billion web pages available, it would be impossible to search for the information that is specifically needed. This is why search engines 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.

Types of search engines

Crawler based search engines

Directories

Specialty search engines

Hybrid search engines

Meta search engines

Crawler based search engines

Are search engines that use software programs that are called, “Spiders”, “crawlers”, “Robots”, “Bots”. These programs can access the webpages to categorize and analyze them and then add them in the search engine data base, where any user can find them when searching. The Crawler based search engines are constantly updated with new webpage that would be available in their database.

Examples:

Google

Yahoo

Ask.com

Google

Google began in January 1996 as a research project.

Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Most popular search engine.

Google's homepage includes a button labeled "I'm Feeling Lucky". When a user types in a search and clicks on the button the user will be taken directly to the first search result.

Besides the main search-engine feature of searching for text, Google Search has more than 22 "special features” like: weather, unit conversion, currency conversion, time, calculator, maps, and sports scores.

Yahoo!

In January 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo, Stanford University graduates, created a website called “David and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web”, in Sunnyvale, California.

In April 1994, “David and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” was renamed to “Yahoo!”

Yahoo! provides Internet communication services such as Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Mail.

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 Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California.

Directories

Are websites sectioned in specific categories by human editors and are then place in the “Directories” database.

Examples:

Yahoo Directory (www.Yahoo.com)

Open directory (www.dmoz.org)

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 beneficial for narrowing down the searching process.

Examples:

Askjeeves (Question and answer search engine)

Medhunt (Provides only medical information)

Hybrid search engines

Are search engines that use both crawler based searches and directory searches to obtain their results.

Example:

Yahoo.com

Google.com

Meta search engines

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

Examples:

Metacrawler

Dogpile

How to use search engines1) Be specific:

When searching on a search engine be more specific in wording, such as using school science fair projects instead of science projects.

2) Use the + symbol and - symbol:

If you want to use two words in a search, you can use the + symbol before each word so that only web pages that have both words appear. Example: +fruits +vegetables. On the other hand you can use the – symbol if you are looking for a topic such as Shakespeare and just want to search for his sonnets you can search for it as – Shakespeare – sonnets. The result will have only information that you need and no info that is irrelevant to the topic.

3) Use Quotation marks:

The quotation marks are used if you want to search for specific phrases. Example: “Mark Krikorian biography”

4) Combining symbols: you can combine all the symbols explained above to do the search your own way.

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 the user.

Boolean Operators

And is equal to the + symbol

Not is equal to the – symbol

OR means that the search engines automatically return to the words that you type in.

Near is equal to putting quotes for a specific phrase such as “Shakespeare sonnets”

Sources

Kidz World. (n.d.). Kidz World. Retrieved November 21, 2011, from www.kidzworld.com/article/1900-search-engine-tutorial

Inestasia. (n.d.). inestasia. Retrieved November 14, 2011, from www.inetasia.com/NewsandEvents/importance-of-search-engine.html

websearch. (n.d.). websearch. Retrieved November 14, 2011, from websearch.about.com/od/2/g/boolean.htm

Webopedia. (n.d.). webopedia. Retrieved November 14, 2011, from http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/se

zeald. (n.d.). zeald. Retrieved November 14, 2011, from www.zeald.com/Blog/x_post/types-of-search-engines.html