What's a ........???

What is a search engine?

Internet search engines (eg Google, AltaVista) help users find web pages on a given subject. The search engines maintain databases of web sites and use programs (often referred to as "spiders" or "robots") to collect information, which is then indexed by the search engine. Similar services are provided by "directories," which maintain ordered lists of websites, eg Yahoo!

How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?

The search engines follow a set of rules - what they call an algorithm. This is uses the location/frequency method.

Frequency determines relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages. Pages with the search terms appearing in the HTML title tag are often assumed to be more relevant than others to the topic.
Plus they have a guard against ‘spamming’ which is a page that has the keyword listed many times, just to direct you to that particular page which has no relevance to your desired topic.

Who, or what makes one page more useful than another one?

Let’s use Google for an example. They sort the web pages depending on how many other web pages are pointing at them - meaning your results are logged and monitored to determine which sites are being used the most.

Favourite search engines?

I am a self confessed Google lover. Why? Because I can always find what I need! For asthetic reason I prefer the way the page is set and how the results are presented.

Others that I have used are Altavista, motzila firefox, skroogle, doogle (for an irishmans angle on things).

News Stories

Viacom Media to sue Google/YouTube for $1billion.

Google, YouTube face $US1b lawsuit. 14/03/2007. ABC News Online

Google expands

Australian IT - Google plans software, not phone (Correspondents in San Francisco, MARCH 23, 2007)