Search engines have not gained this fame and promptness popularity in due course of a night. It took search engines, couple of years to reach the position where it now stands. It is embedded in our daily life and has become an integral part. No matter how simple it seems to use and handle the search engine, the back end i.e. the efforts put into making it simple, even for a beginner, is very complex. The prime purpose of the search engine is to deliver most relevant and significant result in minimum time.
Discovery, indexing, query firing and ranking of pages are four core functionality of a search engine.
Discovery
Discovery refers to Content discovery as in searching through the entire web or technically crawling through the web pages. It is called “Web Crawling”. Comparing to the real world it has the similar characteristics as that of the spider web. The World Wide Web or the Web by which it is widely known consists of billions of web page interlinked to each other in some heavy complex network. Search engines go through these networks in search of the relevant contents. All the search engines are equipped with their own spiders or bots for the “crawling” process.
Indexing
All the pages so crawled are stored in the massive database of the engine called the index. Search engines maintain an index of the popular search and sites. Search engines, pays regular visits to these sites for monitoring update or amendments, if any. This makes the search process more optimized. The organization of the indices is such that the relevant text or the search is obtained in fragments of seconds. When the site in not indexed, search engine takes more time for searching the content.
Querying
Query firing involves the way, the method which is followed by the user in order to get the desired information. It is a facility provided to the user to enter their search topic. The searched results are stored in the database according the criterion provided by the user. Now, the question is how the user decides and feeds the search? Well, it depends on the query entertaining method implemented by the search engine. Search engines follow some input syntax designed for the query purpose and upon following the syntax while searching; one can utilize the search engine’s power to the fullest. It is the easiest approach for searching if the search is allowed to be fired in natural language itself. To facilitate the user with natural language search, Google, the most used search engine, has incorporated a method in which the phrase or the question included into double quotes. By doing this the search engine looks into the web only for the particular line or phrase which in into inverted commas. This is one of the ten query operators which Google uses in order to obtain the required results.
Ranking
Search results are displayed in accordance to relevance of the searched topic with the highest relevant highlighted first and the least relevant at the last. Search engines have algorithms which determine the ranking of the page in the web. Higher the ranking, more are the chances that it is a relevant content. All the search engines have unique and customized algorithms. Algorithms are nothing but mathematical formulae which rank the web page after considering number of deciding aspects. Analogous to a beauty pageant, where contestants are not just measured on the beauty, but are also evaluated on other factors, page ranking also depends on many factors other than the quality of search result. One should be careful while building a web page as the factors which decides the rank can be positive or negative at times if not utilized in a proper manner.
