Search engines characteristics, types, examples

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Simon Doyle
Search engines characteristics, types, examples

The search engines They are software programs whose main objective is to display website listings with the content that the user is looking for. To do this, the search engine collects words from the user that it then matches with the websites, in order to get the results..

That is, its purpose is to extract the requested information from a huge database of resources available on the Internet. Numerous studies have shown that between 40% and 80% of users find what they are looking for using the Internet search engine function..

Some of the most used search engines around the world

These engines have become an important tool in the day to day to find any necessary information that is not known in advance where exactly it is stored.

However, this process of collecting words and matching them is not a simple exercise, because you have to know the “relevance” factor of each word. Therefore, different search engine technologies use different word resolution methods..

Article index

  • 1 Characteristics of search engines
    • 1.1 They direct visits to web pages
    • 1.2 They have an algorithm
    • 1.3 Tracking
    • 1.4 Indexing
    • 1.5 Ranking
    • 1.6 Understanding the queries
    • 1.7 Storage
    • 1.8 Results
  • 2 Types of search engines
    • 2.1 Trackers
    • 2.2 Directories
    • 2.3 Hybrids
    • 2.4 Metasearch engines
  • 3 Major Search Engines Today
    • 3.1 General search engines
    • 3.2 Search engines for scientific articles
    • 3.3 Hotel search engines
    • 3.4 Flight search engines
    • 3.5 Search engines to find employment
    • 3.6 Image and video search engines
    • 3.7 Movie Search Engines
    • 3.8 Document search engines
    • 3.9 Business search engines
    • 3.10 Search engines to find workers
  • 4 References

Search engine features

They direct visits to web pages

The best thing about search engines is that they drive traffic to websites. Thus, with proper website optimization, search engines will always be able to offer that site to the public..

Users perform billions of searches on Google alone to find relevant information. This opens up a huge scope for online content publishers and businesses to attract people to their website for free..

They have an algorithm

Search engines follow guidelines, as well as having their own algorithm to decide the ranking of websites in search results. Optimizing websites to suit Google and other search engines is an essential part of the website in order to reach a large audience..

Tracking

A search engine needs a set of data from which it will build an index, which it will query in order to return the results.

To collect the data, the search engine starts with an initial set of pages, called seed pages, from which it extracts the links and thus recursively traces it, using a traversal algorithm..

The crawler is a vital element of the search engine. Basically, you search the Internet to find website addresses and store their content in your database. Through tracking, new information can be scanned on the Internet or old data can be located.

Indexing

Existing content on the Internet is indexed based on the keyword phrases appearing on each website. Basically, it seeks to transform the tracked data in order to be able to ask questions such as:

- How many times a phrase appears on a web page.

- How much information does the phrase convey.

- How important is the phrase on the web page.

This makes it easy to find a search query and a particular topic. Keyword phrases are the group of words that a person uses to search for a particular topic.

After removing unnecessary words, store content in an organized way for quick and easy access.

Ranking

You already have an index from which you can search the query phrases. However, web pages that simply have that phrase are not desired. What you want is that the search engine returns from the query a ranking of web pages that:

- Be trustworthy.

- Are relevant to your purpose.

- Have authority in the matter.

Understanding the queries

You do not want to depend on the query keywords that the user enters as such. Perhaps the query has spelling errors. Perhaps it is too expressive or not precise, such as: "How to reserve tickets on the Internet through a network of banks".

Therefore, you want to know the underlying intent or nature of the query. Is it informative, transactional or navigational?

Before searching the index and dynamically qualifying web pages to return a response to the user, an attempt is made to debug the query and understand it. What will make a search engine better is to understand what you wanted to type in order to tell the search engine what exactly you are looking for..

Storage

It is essential to store web content in the search engine database for easy and fast search. The volume of content available to the user will depend on an adequate amount of storage space.

Larger search engines such as Google can store a large amount of data in the order of terabytes, thus offering a greater available source of information to the user..

Results

They are the links to the websites that appear on the search engine page when a specific keyword or phrase is consulted. When a search term is typed, the crawler goes through the index and matches what was typed with other keywords.

Algorithms are used to provide the most relevant data first. Each search engine has its own set of algorithms and therefore they return different results.

Search engine types

Trackers

These types of search engines use software programs, called "spiders" or "crawlers," to search and categorize web pages on the Internet. The crawler fluently analyzes the web pages, extracts the keywords and then adds these pages to the search engine database.

Then when a user performs a search, the search engine will check their web page database for the keywords the user searched for to present a list of suggested link results..

Crawlers constantly search the Internet for new web pages and update their information database with these pages, whether they are new or modified..

Advantage

- Easy to use.

- Contain a large number of web pages.

- Familiarity. The vast majority of people who search the Internet are familiar with Google.

Disadvantages

- Sometimes it turns out to be too much information.

- It's easy to fool the crawler: Websites have hidden data that can be manipulated to make the page look like something it isn't. That search result could lead to a porn site.

- Page ranking can be manipulated: There are ways to improve where a page appears in the results list.

Directories

They are search engines powered by human editors, who decide to which specific category in the directory database each website belongs. A website is submitted to the directory and the editorial staff must approve its inclusion.

Human editors thoroughly review the website and classify it, based on the information they find, using a set of predefined rules. The Open Directory project and also the public Internet library are examples of directories.

Advantage

- Each page is reviewed for relevance and content before being included. This means there will be no more surprise porn sites..

- Sometimes fewer results mean finding what you need faster.

Disadvantages

- Unknown layout and format.

- Delay in creating a website and listing it in the directory.

- You can have problems with more cumbersome searches.

Hybrids

They are a combination of crawlers and directories. When searching you have the option of searching the web or in a directory. On the other hand, it is possible that for the same search results generated by humans and by the crawler will be received. In this case, human results usually appear first..

Metasearch engines

They are those who search in several other search engines at the same time, combining the results found in a list. Although more results are obtained with meta-search engines, the relevance and quality of the results can sometimes be affected..

Top Search Engines Today

General search engines

The most used search engines allow you to find articles, web pages, images, videos, documents, etc. The most used in the world are:

  • Google.
  • Bing.
  • Yahoo!!
  • Baidu.
  • DuckDuckGo.
  • Yandex.
  • Ask.
  • AOL.

Search engines for scientific articles

Wolfram Alpha

It is a search engine for scientific knowledge that does not list documents or web pages as search results, but rather these are based on facts and data about that query. Its mission is to make all systematic knowledge computable and widely accessible.

Base

It is a multidisciplinary search engine for academic Internet resources, created by the Library of the University of Bielefeld, in Germany.

Hotel search engines

Trivago

It is a metasearch engine that finds the best hotel, by comparing the prices taken from different websites. You can search specifically by city or a representative place, or by hotel.

Hotel Engine

To book hotels for business trips. All hotel stays can be managed and also booked, with access to data on company travel preferences, hotel reservations and billing management.

Flight search engines

Skiplagged

You can find cheap flights because you take advantage of the transfers. For example, if you are looking for a flight from New York to Chicago, you can find a cheap flight from New York to Denver that has a stopover in Chicago and get off there without completing the itinerary.

Skyscanner

It has an exceptional platform to search for flights in Europe. Also on the page you can search for hotels and rental cars. It has decent loading times, a clean user interface, and includes many European airlines in its listings..

Search engines to find employment

Adzuna

It is a job advertisement search engine that operates in more than 15 countries. Collects and displays in a single database the vacancies of specialized job portals, hiring websites and large job boards.

CareerBuilder

It is an employment website with offices in many countries on various continents. In its home country, the United States, it is one of the first on the market among job websites.

Image and video search engines

Flickr

It offers an advanced search screen that allows you to find photos, screenshots, illustrations and videos on the web. You can also search for content with a Creative Commons license.

Tinye

If you've seen an image on the web and you want to know where it comes from, that's what TinEye is for. Simply drop the image into the search box and TinEye will find where that image is on the web.

Youtube

Very popular website that receives more than 1.5 billion registered users monthly, also transmitting more than one billion hours of video to users every day.

TikTok

Website created in China, which has turned out to be a great revolution showing short videos made with mobile phones. They seek to inspire creativity and also bring joy.

Movie Search Engines

IMDb

By searching this engine you can make very powerful queries about actors, directors, movie titles and also TV shows in its database. You really find exactly what you are looking for, being the most popular movie search engine on the net.

Allmovie

It is one of the best websites for researching various types of movie information. Movies can be searched not only by name, but by subject, duration, rating, genre, year and several other parameters.

Document search engines

Blog search engine

Just as the name implies, it searches blog posts using keywords. It's not perfect, but it's much better than a general search.

Scribd

It is the website with the largest set of publications, with which you can thus obtain a large amount of original content written on the web. The results can be classified in different ways: file types, language, length, upload date, etc..

Business search engines

GlobalSpec

It is a technology services company that provides the search for industrial and engineering products, indexing more than 180 million parts divided into 2,300,000 product families from more than 24,000 manufacturers' catalogs and also distributors..

ThomasNet

It is an online platform for supplier discovery as well as product supply in the US and Canada. It has varied volumes of information on industrial products, including distributors, manufacturers and also service companies within thousands of industrial categories..

Search engines to find workers

LinkedIn

It serves to search not only the available curricular information of professional workers from anywhere in the world, with their connections, but also offers job seekers an advanced job search to find jobs.

ZoomInfo

It is a company on the web that offers its database to both sales and marketing managers, to be able to search for information on professionals in those areas.

PeekYou

Index people and their links on the web. It has indexed more than 250 million people, mainly in the United States and Canada. Search results are created from publicly available pages, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Google+, blogs, etc..

References

  1. Quora (2020). What are some characteristics of web search engines? Taken from: quora.com.
  2. Neilpatel (2020). 40 Advanced and Alternative Search Engines. Taken from: neilpatel.com.
  3. Arkansas State University (2020). Searching the Internet: Types of Search Engines. Taken from: libguides.astate.edu.
  4. Webnots (2019). What are Different Types of Search Engines? Taken from: webnots.com.
  5. Brett Holzhauer (2020). The Top 5 Flight Search Engines of 2020. Value Penguin. Taken from: valuepenguin.com.
  6. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (2020). List of search engines. Taken from: en.wikipedia.org.
  7. Alex Chris (2020). Top 10 Search Engines In The World. Taken from: reliablesoft.net.

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