A search engine is a specially designed tool that allows you to search information that is available on the World Wide Web. The search engine will bring you results presented in an organized list that consists of web pages, information, links, and images. Search engines are operated algorithmically as well as with human editing.
A search engine uses web crawling, indexing and searching in that order to bring you the most accurate results related to your search. They work by storing mass amounts of information about millions of web pages and then will retrieve the relevant information as it is requested by users. The web crawler, otherwise known as the spider is used as an automated web browser and will follow every visible link. The contents of each page are analyzed and the web crawler will determine how it should be indexed.
Words are extracted from the description, meta tags as well as from the webpage itself to determine what type of webpage it is and what it has to offer. Once the data is collected it is indexed and stored until needed.
Larger search engines such as Google will store all or a portion of the source page (the cache) in addition to any information the web pages offer. AltaVista stores every word of every page. By storing the cache it helps keep the searching filtered more easily when pages are constantly updated. Google’s method of indexing relieves the linkrot and allows users to feel confident that the content that is found due to their search will be current and usable. The cache can also be helpful when the content is updated and removed and no longer found on any other sites. The cache allows the user to still find and retrieve the information as a type of archived source.
Users will normally input a keyword or keyword phrase into the search field of the search engine when they are looking for something particular. The search engine will examine its index and supply a list of organized results of web pages that best match the keywords or keyword phrase that was entered. There will be a short summary of each webpage that describes what the page is all about.
The larger search engines strive on bringing back only relevant results. There are millions of WebPages that contain the keyword entered in the search field but not all the sites will have that relevant information. The search engines have used their web crawlers and indexing to filter out information that is useless and create their own method for analyzing a website for content.
Many search engines have began using page rankings to help assist in their filtering. The search engines will look at each page and determine by their meta tags, descriptions, keywords and content if they are a site of relevance to the words they are using. The better a site is ranked the closer to the top of the search results it will appear. The search engines will often times use other websites to help determine if your site should be higher ranked. If a high ranked page is linked to yours it is considered a vote for your [age and the search engines take this into consideration when calculating your rank.
