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What's
an Internet Search Engine?
By Matt Western.
In
this article I will provide a brief conceptualized explanation
of what a search engine is, how it works and what it does.
A
search engine! What the heck I that?
The
Internet consists of many millions of web pages and all these
web pages contain pictures and information of one sort or another.
So,
how the heck do you find anything anywhere? You're not going to
sit in front of your computer day after day looking for something.
There has to be way in which you can easily find what you're looking
for.
Well
there is. The answer to your searching problems are search engines.
A
search engine is a computer program that is specifically written
to go out onto the Internet and to read and inspect every web
page it comes across.
Simply,
a search engine can be thought of as consisting of four parts
or components.
In
an attempt to keep things real simple I'll make up names for each
of these four components.
The First Component
Let's call the first component the crawler.
The
crawler is the part of the search engine that is sent out to 'crawl'
all over the Internet reading and deciphering every web page it
comes across.
It
reads what's written on every web page it comes across, it takes
note of the pictures it finds as well as many other very complex
tasks.
The
crawler passes all this information onto the second component
of the search engine.
The
Second Component
The second component of our search engine and possibly the
most complex, I'll call the brain.
The
brain does all the hard work. It decides what is on what web page,
or what each web page is about, what topic is discussed etc.
It
interprets information it receives from the crawler and sorts
common information into common areas.
It
decides what information is given or presented as an answer to
a persons query or question.
It
determines if a web page actually contains valid and useful information
or is irrelevant.
The
brain does all the tough decision making work of the search engine.
The Third Component
I'll call the third component of our search engine the database.
The
database is where all the information the crawler has discovered
is stored in an organized and sorted manner.
Search
engine databases are generally very large in size and are usually
located or spread across several computers.
When
you visit a search engine such as Google or Altavista or any other
search engine to look for something, the results you get back
from your query (the question you ask the search engine) all come
from a database.
The
Fourth Component
The fourth component is the least complex. I'll call it the
'front end'.
The
front end is simply the human interface of the search engine,
or in other words, the part of the search engine you see when
you visit the search engines home page.
Here's
Googles 'front end' or home page.
The
front end allows visitors to enter search terms or queries into
the search engine.
It
is also the entrance to any other features or services that the
search engine may provide.
So
I hope this brief introduction to search engines has been
useful. Now you should know just a little bit more about what
a search engine is, what it does and how it does it.
Article
© Matt Western - deTechnify.com
**********************************************************
Matt Western has been working in the electronics and IT areas
since 1983. These days he heads up deTechnify.com a web site aimed
at clearing away the technical haze surrounding computers computing
and the internet.
You can contact Matt via http://www.detechnify.com
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