What is a Search Engine ?

May 2003:
The internet is made up of billions of pages, these pages are located on the interent by assining them an address or 'URL' (Uniform Resource Locator).

A Search Engine tries to provide as broad a list of these URL's as possible, so that someone searching the internet for information can locate a page with the information they require on it.

There are 2 ways a Search Engine will gather it's list of these URL's.

1) Is to accept page submissions; this is where anyone can submit a URL for inclusion in the Search Engines list of URL's also known as the Search Engines Directory.

2) Is to use a 'Spider'; a spider is a piece of software that is used to gather information following a set of guidlines on how to examine and report on what it finds. A Search Engine
would send out a Spider to report on what information is available and where on the internet. Cataloging what information was found and where using the URL as the address of the information.

Some Search Engines may use both of these methods. www.google.com for example.

A Search Engine would then attach a list of keywords and keyphrases that pertain to a certain URL in it's directory. When a Search Engine user requests a list of pages using a keyword or keyphrase to query the Search Engines Directory, the Search Engine will return a list of URL's that are relevant to the users search or 'query'.

A Search Engine is a web site that has access to a list or 'directory' of pages on the internet that it has found or been informed of. The User will search the directory using a keyword or keyphrase, the Search Engine will the return a list of URL's in the order it deems most relevant to the users search.

Search engines have been enabling internet users to find information on the ever expanding network of computers that is the Internet for some time now.

Search engines have made cataloguing and indexing the mass of information available on the internet into more than just online directories, with some search engines now having the kind of brand recognition of any of the large coporate companies you can think of and the revenue to.

But what makes a search engine popular ? there are quite a few to choose from online, sowhat makes everyone come back to the same page that looks the same as yesterday and they day before again and again ?

Relevant Search Results, easy to use/navigate website, relevant search results, multi lingual support, relevant search results, up to date results that aren't stale & I won't write it again but I think you get the picture.

Relevant Search Results are what keep users coming back and back again, so who provides the most relevant search resluts.

If we go on the premise that users return because of results and according to http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox21.html, the user statistics look like this.

The 7 largest search engines on the web are:
1. Google 55.2%
2. Yahoo 21.7%
3. MSN Search 9.6%
4. AOL Search 3.8%
5. Terra Lycos 2.6%
6. Altavista 2.2%
7. Askjeeves 1.5%

Then Google would be the engine that is returing the most relevant results, with Yahoo coming in second, Microsoft's MSN third and the internet giant AOL coming in fourth.