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Search Engines
What is a Search engine?
In my own words a search
engine is somthing
that helps you look up any topic on the inernet. A search engine files
all the web pages and puts them in catagories. So when you type in a
search for whatever topic you are looking for it finds all of the pages
which include your topic. Pretty cool huh?
Think of it as if you had to research a topic in the library.
Well a search engine is like a librairan who tells you where all the
information is. But the search engine does you one better, it also goes
and gets all the "books" for you (in this case web pages.)
Its pretty self explanitory, in netscape there's a button labeled "net
search" press that and a new screen pops up. Theres a box with a button
that says "search", type in a topic that you wish to look for and press
the "search" button. Wham! There should be a whole list of pages on the
topic that you typed in.
Search engines for the inexperienced
In my experience, using a search engine doesn't take much computer
knowledge. Its pretty self explanitory, in netscape there's a button
labeled "net search" press that, and a new screen pops up, there should
be a list of different searh engines which you select, so just pick any
one. There should also be a box
with a button that says "search", type in a topic that you wish to look for
and press the "search" button. Wham! There should be a whole list of
pages on the topic that you typed in. From there, just click on one
which seems most relevant. It's pretty easy, wether
you're a beginner or a pro, the only thing is deciding which search
engine to use. I like excite the best, it takes me exactly where
I want to go. But try them all you may disagree, you may like
another one better.
The first time that I tried to look for something was pretty easy.
I choose yahoo, and typed in "free diving" and a list of pages came up.
I scrolled through them and found exactly what I was looking for.
Although when I looked up the same topic in different search engines, I
found that there were alot more pages on free diving. So my advise is
that even if you find what you are looking for, try looking in other
search engines, you never know what's out there! I like Yahoo especially
it's daily updated stock quote feature. Try them all out and decide for
yourself which one you like the best.
Search engines
and previous
generations
After using multiple search engines, one
student, Braden
Kato soon found that different search
engines index things differently, he says, "Seems almost as if
each engine has its own database to work out from"
Ragna
Borries found out the hard way that there is a counter on
the bottom of the screen which shows how many bytes of
information had been received. She says, "First, Lycos showed me
the Catalog of the Internet and
when I asked for information on advertising it gave me a whole
list of 17 options for specific information on different points
of
advertising. I clicked on advertisinglaw. However, it took so
long to connect and in my impatience I began clicking all over
the
place. I did not pay attention to the display on the bottom of
the page which showed me how many bytes of the full document
had been received yet. In my despair I actually managed to freeze
the screen. When it finally unfroze again it went wild...I
ended up at the Netscape Homepage again. From now on I will
always watch that display at the bottom of the page, and wait
until the entire document requested has been send."
Nitsa Mc
Carthy found out more about search engines by getting help
through accelarated learning.
What I learned was that not all search engines index the pages the
same way.
How search engines work
Some of the search engines that I looked at were, Infoseek,
Excite, and Magellan.
Infoseek
In Infoseek I found that,Infoseek Select Sites
Search through only these valuable pages, which are
categorized under popular topics. To narrow your search to
the Select pages within a specific topic, click on that
topic, press the "Only topics under..." radio button, and then
enter your search. (To search all web pages, including
those that are not Infoseek Select Sites, choose the
World Wide Web instead.)
Search results are sorted from highest to lowest score. A score
identifies how closely a result matches your search.
Scores range from 0 to 100, based on the words and phrases that
you use in your search:
The score is partly determined by the number of times that a
word or phrase appears on the page.
Searches for common words, such as "computer" and "game",
generate lower scores because these words are found in
many pages. These words cannot be easily used to distinguish
pages containing relevant information.
Searches for uncommon words, such as "joystick" and
"gamepad", generate higher scores because the words do not
appear in many pages.
Searches for phrases (combinations of words), such as
"computer game"
generate higher scores because the combination of words is
not as common as each individual word.
Also note that the results are computer-generated by our search
technology based on the words and phrases that you enter
and on the contents of the documents that we index. Because of
this, you might see results that you did not expect or intend to
find. For more information about Infoseek, check out
help on Infoseek
Excite
I found that Excite uses a machine called ICE (Intelligent
Concept Extraction) to index their files. Excite lists 10
search results at a time, in decreasing order of confidence.
Each result consists of a title, a URL, and a
brief summary of what the page is about. The summary is
automatically generated by ICE. The red percentage to the left of
each result is the confidence rating. The closer to 100% the
rating, the more confident ICE is that you were looking for the
document. For more information on Excite, check out help on
Excite
Magellan
All of the pages in Magellan are given a rating by a team of
editors and writers. The cites are rated by awarding one to
ten points in three areas, Depth (is it copmrehensive
and up to date), ease of exploration(is it
well organized and easy to navigate), and net
appeal (is it innovative, funny, cool, hip.) Then
the cite is given a star rating, four stars for 28-30
points, three stars for 22-27 points, two stars for 13-21
points, and one star for 1-12 points. These stars appear
next to the cites to give you the rating for each. Magellan also
contains what is called a green light. When this green light is
posted next to a cite it means that the cite contains no adult
or mature materials. I think this is for parents to monitor their
children, since there is an option to show only green
light cites.
Searching on different engines
I did my search on spear fishing, since it's my favorite past
time. I did my first search using Infoseek, this turned up
37,396 cites, and were in displayed in order of score(a rating
that's given by Infoseek.) All this information seemed useless,
it showed me pages put up by a guy whose last name was spear, and
a whole bunch of things related to fishing. It didn't pair the
words and look for them together, it was too broad and vast a
search.
Then I did the same search in Magellan, at first it didn't
work, it took so long that I just clicked on stop. I tried
it again and decided that I would give it another chance, so I
waited and waited and waited and still nothing, it was like it
froze up! So I played
around a little and tried it once again, and this time I got in
really fast. There were 22,856 cites, but it was like the search in
Infoseek, nothing was relevant, just a bunch of garbage talking
about fishing(with a rod and reel.) Then I got out of Magellan
and played around some more and when I tried to do the search
again it woulden't load just like the first two times!
Weird huh?! I think that this search engine takes far too
long. Unless I was just unfortunate to catch it when it
happened to go down or somthing(highly unlikely, if you ask
me.) I did not like this one at all!!
The last search I did was in Excite, this was by far the
best one yet, it found 264,452 cites and showed me a
percentage of how much of the cite was relevant to spear
fishing and next to each cite was, [more like this], which let
me see other pages which were on the same topic. I found exactly
what I was looking for on the first page and then clicked
on [more like this] and low and behold I found more cites
on spear fishing and free diving. I was totally impressed
by this search engine. In my opinion it is the best search engine
that I've used including Yahoo, and Lycos which come in a
close second.
What Ive learned about search engines
After using the help feature in Magellan, Ive discovered that you
can use + (plus) and - (minus)to help narrow down a search. For example
if you were looking up free diving the engine would find all the pages in
which both free and diving occur together and separately. The - (minus)
is used to omit a word from a search. So if you typed, free diving -sky
-scuba -pool -olympic you would narrow down the search, because it
wouldnt show any sites containing sky diving, scuba diving, pool, diving,
or olympic diving. Using the + (plus) works the same as the - (minus) it
must be typed as part of the word. The + (plus) is used to find ONLY
pages which the two words occur. For example, if you typed, diving +free
the engine will find sites that may contain diving and MUST contain free
This way the search is drastically narrowed down to the original topic
which was free diving.
Excite also uses the + (plus) and - (minus) system in the same way as
Magellan. Excite also has a feature which gives more weight to a word.
To give a word a higher weight add ^ along with a value at the end of the
word. For example, free diving^3 will look for cites on diving rather
than free things (catalogs, ect.) with regard to diving. For a
quick look of how different search engines work check out
Missy Price's home page she expalins it all.
My online personality
Before I took this class, I didnt know that there was such a thing as
an online personality. But as I started to use the computer for more
than just papers and video games, it slowly came apparent to me. The
more I worked on my page, the faster my typing got. As I found better
and faster ways of doing things (cutting and pasting) I became accustom
to getting things done quickly. So when pages took too long to load up,
I would get frustrated, start to sigh, roll my eyes, and talk to the
computer (as if it would actually listen to me.) After is I would have
to say that my online personality is one that is impatient.
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