TS+Internet+Searches

=Internet Search Tips=

Try these Google sites out: @http://www.google.com/educators/p_websearch.html

 History of Web Searching Search Engines Web Directories Refining Your Search Boolean Operators
 * Assignment (/10)

History of Web Searching

 * Archie**
 * The very first tool used for searching on the (pre-web) Internet was [|Archie].
 * The name stands for "archive" without the "v."
 * It was created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal.
 * The program downloaded the directory (folder) listings of all the files located on public anonymous FTP ([|File Transfer Protocol]) sites.
 * It created a searchable database of file names.


 * Gopher**
 * The rise of Gopher (created in 1991 by Mark McCahill at the University of Minnesota) led to two new search programs, Veronica and Jughead.
 * Like Archie, they searched the file names and titles stored in Gopher index systems.
 * Veronica (**V**ery **E**asy **R**odent-**O**riented **N**et-wide **I**ndex to **C**omputerized **A**rchives) provided a keyword search of most Gopher menu titles in the entire Gopher listings.
 * Jughead (**J**onzy's **U**niversal **G**opher **H**ierarchy **E**xcavation **A**nd **D**isplay) was a tool for obtaining menu information from specific Gopher servers.
 * While the name of the search engine "Archie " was not a reference to the Archie comic book series, "Veronica " and "Jughead " are characters in the series, thus referencing their predecessor.
 * Web Searching**
 * The first Web search engine was an index collected in 1993 by the World Wide Web Wanderer called 'Wandex',
 * Wanderer was a web crawler developed by Matthew Gray at MIT to measure the size of the World Wide Web.


 * Netscape**
 * In 1996, [|Netscape] was looking to give a single search engine an exclusive deal to be their featured search engine.
 * At the time, Netscape was the most popular browser in the world (more popular than Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.)
 * There was so much interest that instead a deal was struck with Netscape by 5 of the major search engines
 * For $5Million per year, each search engine would be in a rotation on the Netscape search engine page.
 * These five engines were: [|Yahoo!], [|Magellan], [|Lycos], [|Infoseek] and [|Excite].


 * Google**
 * Around 2000, the Google search engine rose to prominence.
 * The company achieved better results for many searches with an innovation called [|PageRank].
 * PageRank ranks web pages based on the number and PageRank of other web sites and pages that link there, on the premise that good or desirable pages are linked to more than others.
 * Google also maintained a minimalist interface to its search engine as opposed to many other search engines that were cluttering their pages with various links.
 * As of late 2007, Google was by far the most popular Web search engine worldwide.

Search Engines

 * A **Web search engine** is a tool designed to search for information on the World Wide Web.
 * The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called //hits//.
 * The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files.
 * Most Web search engines are commercial ventures supported by [|advertising] revenue and, as a result, some employ the practice of allowing advertisers to [|pay money to have their listings ranked] higher in search results.
 * Those search engines which do not accept money for their search engine results make money by [|running search related ads] alongside the regular search engine results.
 * The search engines make money every time someone clicks on one of these ads.


 * How Search Engines Work:**

A search engine operates, in the following order
 * 1) Web crawling
 * 2) Indexing
 * 3) Searching (queries)

1. Web Crawling
 * Web search engines work by storing information about many web pages, which they retrieve from the WWW itself.
 * These pages are retrieved by a Web crawler (sometimes also known as a spider).
 * A Web Crawler is an automated Web browser which follows every link it sees.

2. Indexing


 * The contents of each page are then analyzed to determine how it should be indexed (for example, words are extracted from the titles, headings, or special fields called meta tags ).
 * Data about web pages are stored in an index database for use in later queries (searches).
 * Some search engines, such as [|Google], store all or part of the source page (referred to as a [|cache]) as well as information about the web pages (this explains the info under each page title found in a Google search)

3. Searching
 * When a user enters a query into a search engine (typically by using key words ), the engine examines its [|index] and provides a listing of best-matching web pages according to its criteria
 * Usually with a short summary containing the document's title and sometimes parts of the text are shown in the search results.
 * Most search engines support the use of the [|boolean operators] AND, OR and NOT to further specify the search query.
 * The usefulness of a search engine depends on the [|relevance] of the **result set** it gives back.
 * While there may be millions of webpages that include a particular word or phrase, some pages may be more relevant, popular, or authoritative than others.
 * Most search engines employ methods to [|rank] the results to provide the "best" results first.

Examples: []

Web Directories

 * A **web directory** or **link directory** is a directory on the World Wide Web.
 * It specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links.
 * A web directory is not a [|search engine] and does not display lists of web pages based on [|keywords];
 * Instead, it lists web sites by category and subcategory.
 * The categorization is usually based on the whole web site rather than one page or a set of keywords, and sites are often limited to inclusion in only a few categories.
 * Web directories often allow site owners to directly submit their site for inclusion, and have editors review submissions for fit.
 * Web directories are becoming less popular. Google has discontinued its directory saying that Search Engines are more effective.

Example: []

Refining Your Search
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**Boolean Operators**
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Feel free to try a different search engine from the page below: []


 * ==Assignment #1 is in the O Drive.==

Print the document below. Redo the web searches using Google and write the new number of "hits" beside the last column on the right. [|Google-Search-Tips.pdf]