About Search Engines

A search engine makes it possible to find virtually anything on the Internet easily, quickly and usually for free. Whether you are using it to find restaurants or vacation resorts, search engines have become integral means of accessing information on the Internet. Recent reports indicate that outside of email, search engines are thought to be the most vital and indispensable services on the web. Google, the world's most used search engine, has become a multi-billion dollar company due largely to its powerful searching capabilities.

History of

Search engines predate the World Wide Web. Archie, developed by Alan Emtage in 1990, was the very first. Early search engines were limited because of their capacity to search only website titles or filenames, rather than text within. By 1996, search engines had become one of the most profitable investments in Internet investment. In 2000, Google had risen to prominence, partially because of its innovative PageRank system that orders search results by relative popularity.

Evolution

Before search engines existed, a complete list of all web servers was maintained by Tim Berners-Lee. Search engines came about because of a desire to browse through all of these web servers in a more accessible way. The first search engines could only search filenames or website titles, but technology evolved rapidly to encompass full text-based searches, which is now the standard. Today, top search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Ask have become household names.

Function

Search engines are used to allow an Internet user to find a specific webpage that pertains to individual needs. A user can use search engines to do anything from answering questions to finding pictures of celebrities. If the Internet is truly the information superhighway, a search engine is the superhighway itself. When a user wants to look for information on the Internet, a search engine is almost always the starting point of the research.

Benefits

Since the Internet is home to billions of websites, it would be tremendously difficult to browse through an enormous list in order to find whatever he or she needs. Search engines make finding things on the web vastly easier, since a typical search takes seconds or even less. Search engines can also search a specific website so one can find whatever is sought without spending too much time looking for it.

Features

Most search engines harvest information by using web crawlers, which are automated web browsers that follow any link they see in order to get all the information. The information is then indexed so that when a user enters a query into the search box, the search engine searches its index. Search engines often categorize websites by relevance, either judging by popularity or authoritativeness, in order to give the user the best websites in the results.

Type

Most search engines are commercial ventures that employ advertising in order to make profits, and some accept money in order to display certain websites higher than others in the results. Those that do not accept money have search-related advertisements that make money when people click on the links. Many search engines are privately run with closed source algorithms, but some are open sourced, which means that users can see and privately modify the inner workings of these search engines.

Resources

• Get details about the top search engines.
• Find out about search engine optimization (SEO).