SEARCH ENGINES - YOUR FREE YELLOW PAGES News Article Written By: iQuantum
What is a search
engine?
Search engines are online tools designed to assist users to
search for information. Users type an input query and the engine searches the
available information to deliver lists of results that are relevant to the
user's input query. To deliver these lists of relevant results, search engines
operate on algorithmic principles and/or human input.
While the term
'search engine' technically refers to all types of electronic/computer tools
that can perform searches, the term is often generically used to refer only to
internet search engines. Such search engines are extremely popular with all
mainstream users of the internet with the most commonly used engines being
Microsoft's Live Search, Yahoo and Google. In fact, Google is so popular the
term 'google' (coined by the founders of Google) is now used to refer to any
form of online internet search in mainstream populations. Microsoft is hoping
for a similar mainstream popularity and acceptance into everyday language for
their latest release, Bing.
How do search
engines work?
The World Wide Web may very well be one of mankind's
greatest inventions, quite on par with the airplane, the car, the television,
the telephone, the computer, the x-ray and goodness knows how many other
creations! Its beauty lies in its very nature - it is an unlimited data house
that is free and accessible to anyone and everyone with a computer (or a new-age
mobile phone) and internet connectivity. It allows people to connect world over
and enables freedom of expression to an extent never before thought possible.
However, this is also its very downfall.
Consider this: there are over
six billion people in this world, and of these six billion people, over 20% have
ready access to the internet. In developed countries, this figure triples to
over 60% of the population. In a world where freedom of expression is a basic
right, every Tom, Dick and Harriet wants to have their say and thinks that they
are entitled to do so. It is no wonder the internet is now considered to be
cluttered and overloaded with information. It's a cyber garbage
dump.
Lucky for us, some cyber gurus took pity and invented the search
engine. Search engines are ingenious online tools designed to assist users with
the sifting of all the information available on the internet so we are only left
with what is relevant. Users enter queries into a search box for the engine to
search the internet and within seconds we receive lists of results (more
commonly referred to as 'hits').
Search engines operate on algorithmic
principles, human input or a combination of the two. Typically human based
search engines are limited to data that is manually entered into a system or
directory, whereas algorithmic principles or 'robots' (also known as 'crawlers',
'spiders' or 'ants') are used for internet search engines such as
Google.
For internet search engines, the robots crawl the web at periodic
intervals to find as many web pages as possible through following as many links
as possible. This information is then fed back to a central warehouse where an
'indexer' reads and analyses all the information to create (or update) an index.
Quite often, the index is sorted according to the words found in the web pages
that the robot has crawled. This assists with the sourcing of search results
that are determined according to the word query.
Whoah, information
overload? Why, you ask, is it so important to know about all these creepy-crawly
mechanisms that search engines use?
Quite simply, search engines are
literally every single marketer's dream - a free directory for the marketer and
the consumer. However, with so many competing products and services out there in
cyber garbage dump land, it is difficult at times to make oneself be heard. By
knowing how a search engine collects and collates information, and how it
determines search results, it is possible to collaborate within the framework to
ensure you are audible. It is possible to employ techniques, strategies and
tactics to ensure that you are in front and on top of all other search
results.
In marketing circles, this is known as search engine
optimization. Learn more about online marketing terms in the FAQs.
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