Search Engines

Details - Frequently Asked Questions - Anecdotes - Links to other sites


Definition: A search engine is a software tool that helps users find Web pages that relate to one or more key words that they have typed in.
Discussion: The search engine builds an index of web pages along with associated key words. The search engine web site provides a form for Internet users to type in the key words that define their areas of interest. The search engine then uses the index it has already created to find the Web pages that match the key words. The results are provided in a list which is often sorted into priority order by the search engine. Each item in the list has a brief description of the Web page and a hyperlink to that page.
See Also: Directories. The other major mechanism for locating Web pages.
More Details (sometimes Technical): The search engine builds up its index of pages using a piece of software called a spider (sometimes called a crawler or robot). What it does is surf the World Wide Web: from each page it visits it follows each of the hyperlinks on that page in turn, and on each page that they lead to, it does the same and so on. For every one of these pages, it looks at the page contents and decides what key words and phrases should be associated with that page. It then stores this information along with the page address in its index. By doing this 24 hours a day and 7 days a week it can cover a lot of ground. Thus search engines with the help of spiders can built up far bigger contents than directories where each entry has to be categorised by a human being. However the categorisation that the spider achieves is far less reliable - a page could contain gibberish and the spider will still identify some key words and add it to the index.
Frequently Asked Questions: How can I ensure that my Web site comes up in the search engines? You need to take the following steps:
1. Make a list of the key words, that when typed into a search engine should lead to your site
2. Ensure that these key words appear in the first paragraph of your page, in the HTML Meta tag, and the page title
3. Register your Web site with the major search engines.; How do I provide a search facility on my Intranet? Most of the search engines that exist on the Internet can be installed on an Intranet. Some (e.g. Excite) are free of charge. Microsoft also offers Index Server - free with NT Server version 4.
A major difference from the Internet is that you know where the web pages are stored. The search engine can thus use the corporate network to go straight to the directories on the Web servers to build up its index. (You do not have to rely on the Webmasters registering their pages or on a spider following links.) So make sure you choose a search engine that supports this feature. You also might want it to be able to search other format files, such as Word documents or spreadsheets.
Once you have chosen a search engine you will typically need to; 1. Obtain a copy of the Search Engine (e.g. download from web site); 2. Install it; 3. Configure it to point to the directories that contain the Web pages; 4. Schedule periodic indexing runs and initial the first run; 5. Create and publish an HTML page for your users to initial their searches.

Anecdotes: None yet
Links to other sites: None yet

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