2008 Woodie Awards
Searching Search Engines
we all use them - but how do they work?
Edwin Lopez
Issue date: 6/5/08 Section: Campus
When you go online and navigate to a search engine to find something that you've been looking for, have you ever wondered how it brought you those listings? Have you ever scratched your head at some of the results that have been displayed? Or are you just curious as to how a search engine works in general so you can have a better experience? Then look no further! We'll help to solve some of the mysteries of the search engine here for you now, and the information in this article should help you to better use search engines, as well as better understand and sort the results offered by them.
When I asked Annette Bernardino, a Service Desk Manager at a local-based search engine named Citysearch about whether or not she thought search engines were truly efficient, she said "if you equate efficiency to the speed in which information is delivered to someone after they request it, I'd say they're very efficient. It's definitely quicker than getting into your car and driving to the local library, only to take the chance that they're closed." But like any other tool, it all depends on how it is used.
To begin, we should first understand that there are different types of search engines, and that they meet our needs in different ways. Some search engines use what's called "human-powered" directories. This means that an actual human being will submit a description of the entire site and have it entered into the search engine's directory. When a search is performed, it looks through these descriptions to find a possible match for our query or search term, and then display any related pages. The actual content of the Web page has no real effect on the search results, which can be both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good if there's a very clear and thorough description of the site, but if the description is not that precise or accurate, then we may not find the right page we need.
The second and more common type of search engine is called a "crawler-based" search engine, which is a little more complex. A crawler-based search engine works in three major steps. The first step is the "web-crawler," also known as a "spider," for the way it crawls the world-wide web. The crawler travels the entire web and goes to every URL it finds, visiting every page on that Website. It then analyzes the contents of every page and collects all the main keywords and data into an index, which is like a database where all the information that is found gets stored and categorized. This is much more dynamic than the human-based search engine, because it can be updated more frequently along with changes to a Website. Normally, web crawlers will visit a page maybe once a month, or every two months.
When I asked Annette Bernardino, a Service Desk Manager at a local-based search engine named Citysearch about whether or not she thought search engines were truly efficient, she said "if you equate efficiency to the speed in which information is delivered to someone after they request it, I'd say they're very efficient. It's definitely quicker than getting into your car and driving to the local library, only to take the chance that they're closed." But like any other tool, it all depends on how it is used.
To begin, we should first understand that there are different types of search engines, and that they meet our needs in different ways. Some search engines use what's called "human-powered" directories. This means that an actual human being will submit a description of the entire site and have it entered into the search engine's directory. When a search is performed, it looks through these descriptions to find a possible match for our query or search term, and then display any related pages. The actual content of the Web page has no real effect on the search results, which can be both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good if there's a very clear and thorough description of the site, but if the description is not that precise or accurate, then we may not find the right page we need.
The second and more common type of search engine is called a "crawler-based" search engine, which is a little more complex. A crawler-based search engine works in three major steps. The first step is the "web-crawler," also known as a "spider," for the way it crawls the world-wide web. The crawler travels the entire web and goes to every URL it finds, visiting every page on that Website. It then analyzes the contents of every page and collects all the main keywords and data into an index, which is like a database where all the information that is found gets stored and categorized. This is much more dynamic than the human-based search engine, because it can be updated more frequently along with changes to a Website. Normally, web crawlers will visit a page maybe once a month, or every two months.
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