Tech-tonic: Search Engines
In the vast urban cyber world, people often find themselves lost; either unable to find a particular item or navigate to an exact page or section. Pinpointing a single file or image from over millions of entries seems very daunting if not impossible. Yet, your desired results are right before you within a fraction of a second (as fast as 0.1
seconds). Yes, indeed search engines have come into our lives as messiahs in their own right when it comes to extracting content from the internet.
When talking about online search or search engines, the first search result at the back of our minds is most definitely Google. Undoubtedly, the Google domain has had a domineering grasp over the online search industry and most notably its success lies behind its credibility and the successful hits produced by its search engine. Leaping past all other search portals by quite a distance, Google is definitely the way to go. Nevertheless, other searches do exist and it’s not that they are completely useless. In fact, there are over a 100 renowned search providers that are still quite in effect. Few shine because of their interface while some burgeon on their specialised search listings. Whichever strategy they may choose, they still add to the countless features available when it comes to producing searches in distinct ways, hence creating a basket of search engines to choose from. In this issue of Tech-tonic, we shall look at the basic features one must look for in any search engine; in the latter half, we shall talk about the search engines lying at the top end of the table.
Relevance
The basic criterion for any search result to be useful, is its relevance to the user. Depending on the keyword(s) put in by the user, the search provider must be able to redirect him to the exact or closest possible result for his search term. While search engines make an effort to display the most relevant results from the top, spam or a misleading keyword information provided by websites very often deceive search engines and yield undesired search results.
Privacy and Security
Another prime factor users are picky about is the sharing of personal information. Certain search parties require user login info for extensive search. Privacy policies vary in websites. In most cases, the user’s search terms and computer IP address are automatically delivered to whatever website they click on from a result’s page. Though some users are fine with this, there are others who do not like giving away personal information at all. For such purposes, search engines today offer a private browsing feature that retains any user information from being published online.
Filtering Searches
Processing search results is no easy job for the search engine either. Finding the right URL from the huge pile of information online using merely the random combination of search terms put in by the user can result in inaccurate results. So today, certain websites are equipped with search filters that use artificial intelligence to sort your results into sub-categories when it comes to large amounts of general search results. Also, search providers use smart suggestion features that either suggest to you a real time relevant keyword within its search term entry box, or prompt a list of categorised search results at the side. This feature becomes highly useful when search topics are vague and ambiguous.
Advertisements and Sponsored links
Nowadays, our search results are bombarded with sponsored links and ads displayed all over the place. This becomes quite a hassle; it is also equally annoying when you are unable to locate the stuff that you are looking for. For such circumstances, search engines have devised means to sort between independent search results and sponsored links by placing them at various sections of the page. For example, sponsored links (2 at maximum) are placed right at the top in terms of Google while some other engines dedicate an entire side column to advertised links.
Let’s now take a look at the biggest names in today’s search industry.
The Big Three
Based on daily traffic, successful searches and experts review Google, Bing and Yahoo as the three big players in the market with Google ruling
without facing much competition. While Google remains the ultimate search solution with the capacity to search for almost anything available on the internet and is constantly adding new features such as voice search and inside book search, Bing and Yahoo are gradually making progress in field. The Microsoft-based search,
Bing has made significant ground in the past
few years by introducing an attractive start page with search refining features, well grouped search results and the powerful social search. Similarly close competitor Yahoo has also been upgrading its features and avatar to lure audiences into using their online facility. As far as rival MSN is concerned, its stagnancy is credited to the lack of efforts put in R&D to make their search page better.
You can e-mail your queries to Tech-tonic at query.techtonic@gmail.com
Posted on: 2012-02-09 09:38
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