Search Engines

Last time we met, I spoke of our quest for a digital camera; you'll be pleased to know that one is now on order. While I was exploring the Web for the camera, I became awfully curious about the search engines I take for granted.

Search engines find us suitable websites to explore by looking for documents containing specified words. When these 'keywords' are found, it returns a list of the sites where the words were found.

They respond to our questions by searching a self-contained index. The index is built by collecting hyperlinks or shortcuts to a variety of documents on any given topic. This is accomplished by sending code (referred to as spiders or crawlers) across the Internet to collect keywords and links from web pages. The search engines then take all the links and shortcuts and indexes them on their own site.

The spiders navigate the Web the same way we do. Each time a spider finds a link to a page with a keyword, it moves on to that page. Web designers try to attract the spiders by putting useful keywords into their page in a format called Meta tags. These Meta tags, in conjunction with the specific mission of the search engine, dictate what will appear in a search engine.

All search engines are different. One of my favorites www.google.com doesn't list shopping sites. I love it to death for normal day to day look ups, but it was a poor choice when I was looking for a where to purchase digital camera - www.excite.com turned out to be much better for places to shop. Even better was a wonderful reader who sent me not only websites but insights.

Not only did my reader save us time searching websites, but saved us time researching the right search engine. There are well over 2,000 search engines in existence! They specialize in just about everything - science, shopping, finance, and I could go on and on. Then there are search engines for kids, engines by regions, even search engines for just pictures or videos … and we haven't even mentioned the majors such as Yahoo, Excite or Google.

The list is endless and includes categories I'd never heard of. Such as metacrawlers that allow keywords to be sent to several search engines all at once. The results are then blended together onto one page. It puts a whole new perceptive on spiders and night crawlers.

There is even a full classification of non-search engines called web portals. These sites offer search engines and a host of services such as e-mail, forums, and on-line shopping. One of the most popular is America Online. However, most of the major search engines have transformed themselves into Web portals to attract and keep a larger audience.

So are you ready for a change? Go to www.searchenginewatch.com and click on Search Engine Listings. Try a new one out and add some spice to your life. And, don't forget the fun of sharing your insights with your friends.