Internet%20Search%20Engines

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Internet Search Engines

• Noah A. Haban
• Eric LeBarron
• Adam Binder
• Seth Holubar
• Dan Kelly

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Agenda

• Technology Description and History
• SMCR
• B-CV
• Competition
• What does the future hold?
• Summary and Questions

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What is a search engine?

• Information retrieval system
• Designed to find information on
• Computer System
• World Wide Web
• Corporate and Proprietary Networks
• Personal Computer

Description History SMCR BCV
Competition Future Summary
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Search Engines The Early Years

• First Internet website http//info.cern.ch/
• Basically an explanation of the WWW

Left Tim Berners-Lee, credited with creation of
world wide web Right Robert Cailliau,
collaborator on WWW project. First web surfer
Description History SMCR BCV
Competition Future Summary
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Pioneer Search Engines

• Archie
• Gopher
• Veronica
• Jughead
• Wandex
• Aliweb (still runs today)
• Webcrawler
• Lycos

Description History SMCR BCV
Competition Future Summary
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Parts of a search engine

• Spiders
• Follow links on web to request pages that have
  either not been indexed or have been updated
  since last index
• Index (catalog)
• Large, slightly outdated collection of content
  which roughly represents the content of the web
• Search Interface and relevancy software
• Accept query, Check relevancy, Gather pages,
  Request ads.

Description History SMCR BCV
Competition Future Summary
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Parts of a search engine

• Meta Tags
• Allow specification of keywords/concepts
• Helpful when words have more than one meaning
• Spiders will search page and change meta tags if
  words do not match up. Prevents false
  categorizing with popular keywords.

Description History SMCR BCV
Competition Future Summary
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Building a search

• Query
• A word or combination of words the user submits
  to search a given topic.
• Results
• Put in order according to other searches and page
  visitation frequency.

Description History SMCR BCV
Competition Future Summary
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SMCR

• Sender
• Inform
• Deceive
• Get attention
• Persuade
• Educate

• Message
• Facts/Figures
• Stories
• Pictures, Video Sound
• Confidentiality
• Complexity
• Advertising

• Channel
• Computer
• Internet
• Webpage

• Receivers
• Internet Access
• All
• Ages
• Education Level
• Gender
• Occupation

Description SMCR BCV
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Receivers

• Who uses search engines?
• From a March 2004 survey of 1,649 people
• 56 use search engines on a daily basis
• Only 13 use different search engines for
  different types of searches
• 57 use the same search engine. Of those people,
  the top 3 are Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Description SMCR BCV
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Receivers

• Who uses search engines?
• Homemakers the finickiest (52 look at only first
  page, then move on)
• Abandonment rates high among educators (40),
  professionals (38) and students (27).
• Age has been shown to make people less patient
  with searches
• 49 use one or more search toolbars

Description SMCR BCV
Competition Future Summary
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Receivers

• Who uses search engines?
• From this info we can conclude
• People of all ages use search engines and half
  use them on a daily basis
• Most people are loyal to one search engine
• Most people abandon a search after the first page
  or two of results
• Top search engines have toolbars available

Description SMCR BCV
Competition Future Summary
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Benefits

• Easy to use
• Search vast databases
• Sophisticated searching often available
• Global

Description SMCR BCV
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Costs

• The web is growing quicker than it can be
  indexed.
• Search engines slow down because of indexing new
  web pages
• Queries currently limited to keywords, resulting
  in matching random words scattered across large
  pages (as opposed to limiting matches within a
  paragraph or phrase)

Description SMCR BCV
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Costs

• Many dynamically generated sites are not
  indexable, resulting in the invisible web
• Some search engines do not rank by relevance, but
  rather by how much the websites pay
• Hundreds of generated sites use tricks to
  manipulate a search engine into displaying them
  higher in results

Description SMCR BCV
Competition Future Summary
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Costs

• How important are the costs to users and how can
  usage be increased?
• Somewhat important
• Sites indexed more by relevancy
• Use a proximity-search option, which uses a
  search bracket to limit matches within a
  paragraph or phrase
• Eliminating linkspam in searches

Description SMCR BCV
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B-CV

• Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Yes.
• Easy
• Less time and effort
• Virtually endless result possibilities
  

Description SMCR BCV
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The Competition
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Share of Searches Trends
Description SMCR BCV
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What does it look like?
Description SMCR BCV
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Google
Description SMCR BCV
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Yahoo
Description SMCR BCV
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MSN
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DMOZ
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Users
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Yahoo vs. Google vs. MSN
Description SMCR BCV
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Other Competitors

• dmoz.org
• Human edited directory of the web. Constructed
  and maintained by community of volunteers
• ChaCha.com
• Human-powered search engine. Uses people to sort
  results by relevance.

Description SMCR BCV
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DMOZ

• Targeted at other search engines.
• Powers directory listings of Netscape, AOL,
  Google, Lycos, HotBot, DirectHit, 100s of Others.
• Benefit
• Open Source Licensing 100 Free
• (No cost to submit a site, or to use data
  retrieved.)
• Cost
• Community Based
• You Get What You Give!
• Sign up to be an editor, get free tools to do it,
  and help make the Web a better place.

Description SMCR BCV
Competition Future Summary
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ChaCha

• Why the name ChaCha?
• Cha Search in Chinese
• ChaCha is a popular fast-paced dance
• Benefits
• Only Search Engine that provides Human guides
  that lead searchers (much like they would in the
  dance) to the most relevant results on the
  internet.
• Creates its own database of successful searches
  and results to index from.
• Costs
• Free to use. (Paid for by advertising?)
• Guides Earn 5-10 per search hour.

Description SMCR BCV
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Diffusion of Innovation Model
Description SMCR BCV
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The Future of Search Engines

• Google
• Google Earth
• Maps
• G-mail
• Desktop
• Google Video
• You Tube
• Froogle
• Toolbar
• Customizable hompage

• Yahoo!
• Personals
• Geocities
• Travel
• Finance
• Hot Jobs
• Yellow Pages
• Yahoo! Mail
• Yahoo! Messenger

• MSN
• City Guides
• My MSN
• Hotmail
• Messenger

Description SMCR BCV
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The Future of Search Engines

• Current top dog is Google
• (Forbes Magazine, January 07)
• Also Yahoo MSN
• Increase Traffic
• Reduce Irrelevant Links
• Offer More Services

Description SMCR BCV
Competition Future Summary
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The Future of Search Engines

• Future top dog candidates include
• Metasearch sites, or sites which combine hits
  from multiple search engines rather than just
  one.
• www.profusion.com
• www.metacrawler.com
• Human powered search engines
• www.chacha.com

Description SMCR BCV
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Summary ROT

• As long the internet grows in size complexity,
  search engines will be needed by users.
• Search Engines make their money from Advertisers,
  who pay to have their web sites come up more
  often.
• The most successful search engines provide users
  with more features than just searching.
• Search Engines must continue to evolve and adapt
  to attract users.
• Search Engines Feed and Supply each other.
• Most people get used to a search engine, and
  stick with it.

Description SMCR BCV
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Description SMCR BCV
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