Week 7: Introduction to Web Searching


What is Web Searching?
  • An act of looking for information in computer database or network (web).
  • web search engine is a software system that is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. Thesearch results are generally presented in a line of results often referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs).

Web searching categories.
  • Directories
    • a website where different resources are gathered.
    • Enormous collections of links to sites, arranged in different categories.
    • The top level is typically a wide range of very general topics.
    • Each topic contains hyperlinks of more specialised sub topic.
    • Popular Directory:
      • AOL- http://www.aol.com/
      • Excite- http://www.excite.com/
      • Lycos- www.lycos.com
      • Yahoo!- www.yahoo.com
      • Hotfrog- http://www.hotfrog.com.au/

  • Search Engines
    • A computer program that does the following:
      • Allows user to submit a query that consists of a word or phase.
      • Searches the database.
      • Returns a list of suitable URLs which match your query.
      • Allows user to revise and resubmit.




  • Meta-search Engines
    • A meta-search or all-in-one search engine performs a search by the use of more than one other engine to complete the search job.
      • http://metasearch.com/
  • Yellow Pages
    • Yellow pages allows user to lookup information about individuals.
    • We can use yellow pages to track down the telephone numbers, email address.
    • Yellow pages contain information about businesses.

What is Web Browser?
  • Can be defined as a software application used to locate and display web.
  • Popular browser
    • IE (Internet Explorer)
    • Nestcape
    • Mozilla Firefox
    • Safari
    • Opera
    • Mosaic and etc


Searching Techniques

  • Pattern Matching Queries

  • Boolean Queries




Searching: How does it work?

  • User Interface- Allows you to type a query and displays the results.
  • Searcher-  The engine searches the database for matching your query.
  • Evaluator- The engine assigns scores to the retrieved information.
  • Gatherer- The component that travels the WEB, and collects information.
  • Indexer- The engine that categorizes the data collected by the gatherer.


Web Resources Evaluation








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