SEARCH ENGINES – AN INSIGHT

The World Wide Web is manna to the knowledge worker in contemporary times - regardless of the nature or the degree of technicality of the information sought. Nevertheless data mining without aids is akin to sailing the oceans without a navigation chart wherein reaching the destination would be nothing short of a miracle.

The miracle translates into a virtual certainty should navigation tools such as search engines are used.

The search engine is virtual software on the net, which leads the surfer unerringly to the relevant sites when the appropriate search keywords are keyed in.

CLASSIFICATION OF SEARCH ENGINES

With the evolution of the World Wide Web, it is evident that the search engines have also witnesses and translation wherein the traditional crawler based search engines were the precursors to the human powered directories. The present day World Wide Web is best known for the ‘hybrid’ engines, which are a mix of the crawler, based search engines and the human powered directories.

CRAWLER BASED SEARCH ENGINES

The Crawler based search engines are best illustrated by the ‘Google’ search engines. They are known for creating their own listings and the when a search is initiated they ‘crawl’ or ‘spider’ the net.

The determination of the listing is multi – factorial. Predominant amongst these factors being – any change in the constitution of the web pages is reflected in the listing of the site, similarly pages, titles and body copy also modify the listing of the site.

HUMAN POWERED DIRECTORIES

Conversely the Open directory is a case in point for the Human Powered Directories wherein the listing is determined by the human hand considering that once the site coordinator submits a short descriptive profile – it is detected by the search engine and matches the profile with the search.

Unlike the Crawler Based Search Engines, any change in the web pages has no implication in the listing protocol. Exceptionally a good web site has a higher probability of being viewed as compared to a poor site whatsoever.

HYBRID SEARCH ENGINES

The Hybrid Search Engines or the ‘Mixed’ search engines as they are more appropriately known are best known for displaying both Crawler Based as well as Human Powered results.

Nevertheless, Hybrid Search Engines will have a predilection for one type of results over the other. To illustrate – the MSN Search Engine is more likely to illustrate Human Powered Listings from Look Smart.

Concurrently the MSN Search Engine also illustrates Crawler Based listings for the relatively obscure searches.

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