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Search Engines

A search engine is an online answering machine, which is used to search, understand, and organize content’s result in its database based on the search query (keywords) inserted by the end-users (internet user). To display search results, all search engines first find the valuable result from their database, sort them to make an ordered list based on the search algorithm, and display in front of end-users. The process of organizing content in the form of a list is commonly known as a Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

Google, Yahoo!, Bing, YouTube, and DuckDuckGo are some popular examples of search engines.

In our search engine tutorial, we are going to discuss the following topics –

• Advantages of Search Engine
• Disadvantages of Search Engine
• Components of Search Engine
• How do search engines work
• Search Engine Processing
• Search Engine (Google) algorithm updates
• Most Popular Search Engines in the world

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Advantages of Search Engine

Searching content on the Internet becomes one of the most popular activities all over the world. In the current era, the search engine is an essential part of everyone’s life because the search engine offers various popular ways to find valuable, relevant, and informative content on the Internet.

A list of advantages of search engines is given below –

1. Time-Saving

Search engine helps us to save time by the following two ways –

• Eliminate the need to find information manually.
• Perform search operations at a very high speed.

2. Variety of information

The search engine offers various variety of resources to obtain relevant and valuable information from the Internet. By using a search engine, we can get information in various fields such as education, entertainment, games, etc. The information which we get from the search engine is in the form of blogs, pdf, ppt, text, images, videos, and audios.

3. Precision

All search engines have the ability to provide more precise results.

4. Free Access

Mostly search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo allow end-users to search their content for free. In search engines, there is no restriction related to a number of searches, so all end users (Students, Job seekers, IT employees, and others) spend a lot of time to search valuable content to fulfill their requirements.

5. Advanced Search

Search engines allow us to use advanced search options to get relevant, valuable, and informative results. Advanced search results make our searches more flexible as well as sophisticated. For example, when you want to search for a specific site, type “site:” without quotes followed by the site’s web address.

Suppose we want to search for java tutorial on TutorAspire then type “java site:www.tutoraspire.com” to get the advanced result quickly.

To search about education institution sites (colleges and universities) for B.Tech in computer science engineering, then use “computer science engineering site:.edu.” to get the advanced result.

6. Relevance

Search engines allow us to search for relevant content based on a particular keyword. For example, a site “tutoraspire” scores a higher search for the term “java tutorial” this is because a search engine sorts its result pages by the relevance of the content; that’s why we can see the highest-scoring results at the top of SERP.

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Disadvantages of Search Engine

There are the following disadvantages of Search Engines –

• Sometimes the search engine takes too much time to display relevant, valuable, and informative content.
• Search engines, especially Google, frequently update their algorithm, and it is very difficult to find the algorithm in which Google runs.
• It makes end-users effortless as they all time use search engines to solve their small queries also.

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Components of Search Engine

There are the following four basic components of Search Engine –

1. Web Crawler

Web Crawler is also known as a search engine bot, web robot, or web spider. It plays an essential role in search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. It is mainly a software component that traverses on the web, then downloads and collects all the information over the Internet.

Note: Googlebot is the most popular web crawler.

There are the following web crawler features that can affect the search results –

• Included Pages
• Excluded Pages
• Document Types
• Frequency of Crawling

2. Database

The search engine database is a type of Non-relational database. It is the place where all the web information is stored. It has a large number of web resources. Some most popular search engine databases are Amazon Elastic Search Service and Splunk.

There are the following two database variable features that can affect the search results:

• Size of the database
• The freshness of the database

3. Search Interfaces

Search Interface is one of the most important components of Search Engine. It is an interface between the user and the database. It basically helps users to search for queries using the database.

There are the following features Search Interfaces that affect the search results –

• Operators
• Phrase Searching
• Truncation

4. Ranking Algorithms

The ranking algorithm is used by Google to rank web pages according to the Google search algorithm.

There are the following ranking features that affect the search results –

• Location and frequency
• Link Analysis
• Clickthrough measurement

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How do search engines work

There are the following tasks done by every search engines –

1. Crawling

Crawling is the first stage in which a search engine uses web crawlers to find, visit, and download the web pages on the WWW (World Wide Web). Crawling is performed by software robots, known as “spiders” or “crawlers.” These robots are used to review the website content.

2. Indexing

Indexing is an online library of websites, which is used to sort, store, and organize the content that we found during the crawling. Once a page is indexed, it appears as a result of the most valuable and most relevant query.

3. Ranking and Retrieval

The ranking is the last stage of the search engine. It is used to provide a piece of content that will be the best answer based on the user’s query. It displays the best content at the top rank of the website.

To know more about how the search engine works click on the following link –

https://tutoraspire.com/how-search-engine-works

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Search Engine Processing

There are following two major Search Engine processing functions –

1. Indexing process

Indexing is the process of building a structure that enables searching.

Indexing process contains the following three blocks –

i. Text acquisition

It is used to identify and store documents for indexing.

ii. Text transformation

It is the process of transform documents into index or features.

iii. Index creation

Index creation takes the output from text transformation and creates the indexes or data searches that enable fast searching.

2. Query process

The query is the process of producing the list of documents based on a user’s search query.

There are the following three tasks of the Query process –

i. User interaction

User interaction provides an interface between the users who search the content and the search engine.

ii. Ranking

The ranking is the core component of the search engine. It takes query data from the user interaction and generates a ranked list of data based on the retrieval model.

iii. Evaluation

Evaluation is used to measure and monitor the effectiveness and efficiency. The evaluation result helps us to improve the ranking of the search engine.

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Search Engine (Google) algorithm updates

Before learning about search engine algorithm, first, understand

What is an algorithm?

An algorithm is a set of instructions that we use to solve an infinite number of problems.

Google’s algorithm also follows some set of rules to solve the problem. Google’s algorithm is very complex to understand and use because Google changes its algorithm very frequently, which is very tough for users to identify in which algorithm currently, Google is working.

The search engine uses a combination of algorithms to deliver webpages based on the relevance rank of a webpage on its search engine results pages (SERPs).

There are the following major updates occurred in Google’s algorithm –

1. Google Panda

Google Panda update was the major change made in Google’s search result. It a search filter introduced on 23 February 2011. The name “Panda” derives from Google’s Engineer Mr. Navneet Panda, who made it possible for Google to create and implement the Google Panda Update. The aim of Google Panda update is to reduce the occurrence of low-quality content, duplicate content, and thin content in the search results. It contains unique as well as valuable results at the top of the search engine page ranking.

2. Google Penguin

In April 2012, Google launched the “webspam algorithm update.” This webspam algorithm later called a Penguin algorithm. Currently, Penguin is a part of the core Google search engine algorithm. It is mainly designed to target link spam, manipulative link building practices, as well as webpage’s scoring when crawled and indexed, which are analyzed by Google.

3. Google Hummingbird

Google Hummingbird was introduced on August 20, 2013. Hummingbird focuses more attention to each word in a search query to bring better results. It is able to catch users and find the content that matches the best intent. The advantage of a hummingbird update is that it provides fast, accurate, and semantics results.

4. Google Payday

Google Payday was introduced on June 11, 2013. It mainly impacted 0.3 percent (approx.) of queries in the U.S. Google Payday update is used to identify and penalize the lower quality of websites that uses various heavy spam techniques (spammy queries) to increase the rank and traffic. The advantage of Payday is that it improves ranking (quality) of search queries.

5. Google Pigeon

Google Pigeon is one of the biggest updates in Google’s algorithm. Pigeon update launched on July 24, 2014. This update is designed to provide better local search results by rewarding local searches that have a strong organic presence with better visibility. It also improves the ranking of a search parameter based on distance and location.

6. Google RankBrain

Google’s RankBrain is a machine learning and artificial intelligence system. It introduced in 2015 via a Bloomberg news story. It is Google’s third most important ranking system. It has the ability to sort content based on accuracy and determine the most relevant results based on the search query entered by the end-users.

7. Google EMD (Exact Match Domain)

Google EMD was launched on September 27, 2012, to improve the quality of content. It worked in the industry for a long time. As the name suggested, it exactly matches the keyword from a website and falls the low quality of content in a lower rank of Google’s search result. According to Google, the EMD affected .6% of English searches.

8. Google Page Layout Algorithm

Google page layout algorithm was introduced on January 19, 2012. It helps us to find high-quality results that are easily accessible and visible at the top of the search engine. It mainly affects 1% of worldwide search requests. This update mainly focuses on the user experience on a website.

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Most Popular Search Engines in the world

1. Google

Google is one of the most popular and trusted search engines in the world. It is created by Sergey Brin and Larry Page as their research project in 1996. Many website browsers like Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox come with the default search engine “Google,” which set as a home page or starting page on every browser.

Google includes Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and other algorithms to identify user’s behavior and quality of results in which they are interested. Google regularly improves the search engine algorithm to produce the best results for end-users.

There are the following features of Google search engine –

• HTML Improvements
  HTML Improvements help to improve the display of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). It also helps us to identify issues related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), such as Missing Metadata, Duplicated content, and more.
• Search Analytics
  Search Analytics is one of the most popular features of Google search engine. It filters data in multiple ways like pages, queries, and more as well as tells how to get organic traffic from Google.
• Crawl Errors
  Crawl Errors help us to solve the problem related to the crawl section. In crawling pages, all errors related to Googlebot are shown.
• Instantly matching our search
  Google’s search engine algorithms help to sort billions of webpages according to end-users requirements and present the most relevant, valuable, as well as useful results in front of end-users.
• Calculation
  Google allows us to uses its platform to perform calculations rather than using the computer’s calculator. To perform a calculation in Google, you just simply type “2345+234” in Google’s search box and press “Enter.” Now, Google displays results at the top of search results.

Note: More than 70% of worldwide internet users use Google to do their searches.

Click on the below link to search on Google – https://www.google.com/

2. Bing

Bing search engine was introduced by Microsoft in 2009. It is the second most visited search engine in the world. It allows us to filter results in different tabs such as images, ads, videos, and more. The disadvantage of using Bing is that it produces slower results compared to Google.

There are the following features offered by Bing –

• Image Search
  Bing offers a more advanced way to organized files than Google. It provides more information to users and various advanced options to filter the photos.
• Video Search
  Bing is one of the best search engine platforms for video content. It mostly brings videos from YouTube to display. Bing allows us to hover the cursor over any videos to display a short clip of the selected video.
• Computations
  Most of the users like the Bing search engine platform for computation tasks. We can simply type our math query in the search box to get instant results. Using Bing, we find top-rated websites to solve equations and mathematics tasks.
• Homescreen
  Bing attracts users by frequently changes background images and makes a home screen more attractive for end-users. It also uses smaller pictures at the bottom of the screen with trending headlines.

Click on the below link to search on Bing – https://www.bing.com/

3. DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is an internet-based search engine which was founded in 2008. It does not track, collect, and store our personal information. It is the best platform for those who want to keep their browsing information secure and private. According to a research DuckDuckGo is 3^rd most popular search engine in Australia, approximately 35 million users use it to search their queries.

Note: In January 2018, DuckDuckGo private browser was launched on iOS and Android.

There are the following unique features of DuckDuckGo –

• Quick Stopwatch
  DuckDuckGo uses both quick timer and stopwatch to measure the time. To start a Quick stopwatch, we simply type “stopwatch” in the search box.
• Check number of characters
  Check number of characters is the most interesting feature of DuckDuckGo. Using this, we can quickly check the number of characters that we are inserting in the search query. To check the character in search query simple type “chars” before and after the query.
• Check whether websites are down or not
  In DuckDuckGo, we use the keyword the “Is website’s name.com down for me” Example: (Is tutoraspire.com down for me) to check whether a particular website is down and up for us.
• Calendar
  DuckDuckGo helps us to find instant answers related to calendars. If you want to see the calendar of your Date of Birth, then use the keyword “calendar month year” (calendar December 1997) in the search box.
• Features for Developers
  DuckDuckGo also provides features for developers. Some cool developer features of DuckDuckGo are given below –
  • It generates lorem ipsum text and encodes URLs to machine-readable text.
  • It helps the developer to convert input stream binary to decimal.
  • It shows a list of special characters and their HTML values.

Click on the below link to search on DuckDuckGo – https://duckduckgo.com/

4. YouTube

YouTube was founded in 2005. It is the best video content delivery search engine. YouTube offers the easiest way to learn new technologies. Currently, more than 1.5 billion users per month use YouTube to deliver information.

Based on the Alexa Traffic ranking, YouTube is 2^nd largest search engine and 3^rd most visited website in the world.

There are the following features of YouTube, which are used to improve User Experience –

• Better Live Streams
  YouTube offers a better live streaming feature since 2013. As we know, a good video helps to grow business, so when it comes to live streaming, you must be prepared with reliable lighting, audio, recording equipment, and decent as well as the well-prepared script.
• YouTube Cards
  YouTube includes various links such as Link Cards, Fan Funding Cards, Donation Cards, and Playlist Cards. These all cards help us to drive traffic on our website, promote our content, and build social lists.
• Captioning
  Captioning helps search engines to find the videos. It adds more text metadata to the videos to makes rank higher on query searches.

5. Baidu

Baidu is the first search engine introduced in 2000. It is the dominant search engine in China. It is a free web browser that is used for both Windows as well as Android. It cooperates with companies like Microsoft, Intel, and Qualcomm. It offers services such as cloud services, social networking, maps, videos, images search, and many more. The main disadvantage of using Baidu is that it can transmit the user’s personal data to the Baidu server without using any encryption algorithm.

A list of features of Baidu is given below –

• Ads
  Ads are one of the most important features of Baidu. Ads help us to generate more leads, optimize our site in a global way, and use various optimization techniques to bring our content up to date for end users.
• Automatic Transcoding
  Baidu transcodes non-friendly mobile websites without any approval by the site owner.
• Click Behaviour – Opens in a new tab
  In Baidu, search results always open in a new tab when we click on a selected website.
• Structured Data Implementation
  To accumulate structured data, Baidu uses its own properties, such as Baidu Open and Baidu webmaster tools.
• Mobile Search
  Baidu uses m.baidu.com as its mobile search engine.

Click on the below link to search on Baidu – https://www.baidu.com/

6. Yandex

Yandex was started by two Russian developers in 1990. It is a free browser that is available for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. It mainly includes online advertising, App Analytics, Data management, smart home technology, Artificial intelligence, as well as a voice assistant called Alice.

The advantage of the Yandex search engine is that it is safe because its browser uses built-in protection, which means when we search a harmful site page, then a pop-up comes, and the browser automatically blocks them.

There are the following features of Yandex –

• Map APIs
  Yandex offers various Map APIs which allow programs, apps, and another application to provide accurate data location for a wide variety of uses. Most of the developers use this Map APIs to build apps and services.
• Database Management
  Yandex provides data management systems for businesses to collect a large amount of valuable information.
• App Metrica
  Yandex provides various analytics software for tracking app metrics. The analytics tool offers the ability to properly track and understand the end user’s data metrics.
• Security & Privacy
  Yandex is the best search engine in terms of security and privacy. It uses various privacy mechanisms to ensure that the user’s data is protected, which helps us to improve the experience of end-users.

Click on the below link to search on Yandex – https://yandex.com/

7. Yahoo!

It is the most widely used Internet search engine and the largest web portal. It provides a structure to view thousands of websites and millions of web pages. Yahoo email services help us to capture a huge market. It includes various services such as Yahoo answers, Yahoo groups, Yahoo search engine, and Yahoo messengers, etc.

As the biggest web portal, it offers various following services –

• Yahoo! Finance
• Yahoo! Shopping
• Yahoo! Games
• Yahoo! Travel
• Yahoo! Maps
• Yahoo! Messengers
• Yahoo! Mail

There are the following features of Yahoo!

• Storage Capacity
  Yahoo provides a huge amount of storage capacity (25 GB) to store data online on Yahoo. This stored data can be used anywhere and anytime.
• Flickr
  Flickr is the best media platform for uploading, managing, organizing, and sharing photos as well as videos.
• Latest News
  Yahoo allows us to share the latest information with our customers from time to time. This information is available in the form of photos, videos, audios, and more.
• Privacy & Security
  Yahoo! Search engine always takes care of the privacy of its users and provides a secure platform with all its privacy constraints.
• User friendly
  Yahoo! Offer extra user-friendly features to its customers. It provides a clear difference between indexes, sent content, receives content, etc. To save memory, it saves unwanted emails only for 90 days; after that, it automatically deletes it from the user’s account.

Click on the below link to search on Yahoo – https://in.yahoo.com/?p=us

Note: In 2017, Yahoo! was acquired by Verizon Communications.

8. Ask

Ask was launched by Garret Gruener and David Warthen in 1996. The aim to design Ask is to perform the search based on the questions submitted by internet users.

It is similar to search engines like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yahoo!.

A list of features of Ask is given below –

• Home page
  Ask provides a set of the homepage or default search provider, you must disable the Ask extension in order to change the setting and set your desired homepage. The home page of Ask.com shows a few categories of articles such as Culture, Travel, and Entertainment.
• Answers
  In the Ask search engine, if you type in the search bar to search for something, then a list of searched results related to your query appears on the screen.
• Videos
  Ask.com allows us to search for video content easily. Ask.com filters HD and 3D videos based on length, which helps us to listen and watch the better quality of videos, music, video clips, documentaries, and more.
• Ask Toolbar
  Ask toolbar is a type of search tool which regularly bundled and offers various other products during the installation. It also allows us to change our browser homepage and replace our default search engine without permission.

You can also uninstall the Ask toolbar by using Add/Remove programs in the Windows Control Panel.

Click on the below link to search on Ask – https://www.ask.com/

9. Naver

Naver is also known as Google of South Korea. It is one of the most important Chromium-based search engine platforms operated by Naver Corporation. It was introduced in 1999 and able to pull out various types of results that match from the entered keywords. It covers almost 75% of searches in the country. Naver also works as a community platform, which creates user generates content where users share their knowledge and discussions. According to research, this search engine handled 74.7% web searches in South Korea, and 42 million users are enrolled in it.

Features of Naver

A list of features of Naver is given below –

Naver’s Layout

In Naver’s layout, much more content is displayed than Google.

Naver Ads

Naver services completely based on the search query of the end-user. For example, if you use Naver on the mobile, then you will find Naver shopping ad, Cafe ads at the top after the paid ads. But if you search for ‘marketing,’ Naver Encyclopedia placed at the top service after the paid ads.

Unique Sidebar

Naver Browser contains a unique sidebar on the right side. This sidebar provides quick access to Naver web services as well as bookmarks.

Click on the below link to search on Naver – https://www.naver.com/

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