Thanks to the ability to search for information on the Internet, any person is able to keep abreast of all the news, receive the information necessary for work or study and expand their knowledge. However, the amount of data uploaded to the Network is constantly growing, and sometimes it is very difficult to find the necessary materials in this abundance.
In order not to be in such a situation, a person must have the ability to search for information on the Internet. To do this, you need to know how search engines work, be able to clearly compose a query, and master some techniques that greatly simplify the search.
Search Engine Concept
Familiar to all of us, Google and Yandex, or already forgotten by many Yahoo and Rambler, are the main tools for finding information on the Internet. They are a complex system consisting of specialized programs and powerful computers. Its operating principle is simple: the user generates a search query, and the system responds with a list of links to information sources. Links are arranged in order of relevance, that is, matching the request.
Initially, the Internet was the property of a few organizations, and the amount of information contained in it was small. But gradually the situation changed. In 1994, the site Yahoo.com appeared, which, according to the intention of its creators, was to look for the necessary information in open directories of sites. However, the speed of replenishment of the World Wide Web of new information was so great that a directory search very quickly lost its usefulness. In the same 1994, the first full-fledged search engine WebCrawler was created to search for information on Internet resources, and three years later Google was launched and announced by Yandex.
Search Engine Features
The increasing volume of information requires improving the main indicators of the quality of search engines. These include:
- Completeness, that is, the correspondence of the list of links to the search query.
- The accuracy or relevance of the sources found to the query.
- The relevance of the information.
- Search speed expressed in server resilience to load. This ratio is expressed directly: the more users formulate queries, the more quickly the search engine should respond to them.
- The visibility is to provide the user with a more convenient selection of the sites he needs within the framework of the results issued by the system.
In order for the listed characteristics to be at the highest possible level, search engines use two main ways of finding a resource.
The first is related to the hierarchical structure of information catalogs. The top lines are occupied by general categories ("Family", "Art", "Science"), which are subsequently divided into more private sections (for example, in the category "Science" you can select sections "Mathematics", "Physics", "History"). Sections are also divided into components, inside of which there are even smaller elements - and so on to the lowest levels, in which the required information will already be located.
The second way to search for information on the Internet is based on keywords. Any user request includes a certain number of tokens that are most repeated in connection with the topic of interest, and the search engine gives a list of sites on which they are most often found.
Search Engine Software Components
To facilitate the search for information on the Internet and improve the quality of information issued to the user, the programs included in the indexing module are constantly being improved. The process of the search engine is divided into three stages, at each of which specially designed robots for this function:
- Spider ("Spider") downloads web-pages and extracts from them all contained links.
- Crawler ("Traveling Spider") goes to all the links extracted in the previous step and determines further directions of the search.
- Indexer ("Indexer") analyzes all downloaded web pages for compliance with the information contained in the request.
Search Engine Hardware
An important element of the functioning of the search engine is the server, which ensures the quality and speed of finding the necessary information. At the first stage of his work, he analyzes the user request. The analysis results are checked for all downloaded files and ranked according to the request found files. The resulting list can be adjusted by additional search conditions specified by the user.
Based on the results of the previous stages, a snippet is formed - an annotation to the sources found, in which the words included in the query are highlighted. It is the snippet that the user sees on the search results page.
Information Search Stages
First of all, it is necessary to formulate a request. At this point, the user should have a clear idea of what kind of result he needs. Further, the course of the search procedure is planned. It refers to information retrieval strategies. On the Internet, specific sites or their catalogs can be used for this, a more thorough study of already known content or viewing ready-made databases (for example, electronic libraries).
At the final stage, the required information is extracted from the results presented on the search results page.
Search Technique
Even seemingly elementary rules for searching for information on the Internet, such as:
- spelling check (despite the fact that modern search engines automatically correct the mistakes made, the result can sometimes differ from the necessary if the request is made incorrectly);
- determining the purpose of the search (for example, for the query "laptop repair, price", the user can get a list of computer services addresses, while he needed the average cost of fixing the breakdown);
- setting the necessary restrictions (for example, in the previous example, the search system could give information about the cost of repairing laptops in St. Petersburg to a user living in Moscow, if he did not establish a geographical area of search).
But even in compliance with these principles, it is sometimes difficult to obtain the necessary information. The ability to search for information on the Internet implies that the user has special skills that allow you to adjust the request.
Keyword Search Features
It’s not necessary to drive detailed essays on a problem of interest into the search bar. In any case, the system will select the most frequent words and, starting from them, will form the result. However, to clarify the desired goal, you can use logical operators.
The signs "+" and "-" allow you to require the system that a certain word must be present or absent in the found sources. It is important that the sign is written together with the necessary word: "laptop repair + price".
To make the search result literally match the query, you need to put an exclamation mark next to it. At the request "! Price" will be issued only sites related to the cost of a service, and not the script for children's matinees.
If you want to get an exact match to a phrase, rather than a single word, you must enclose that phrase in quotation marks. This is especially useful when using a quote you need to find the whole work or statement of a famous person.
Advanced Internet Information Search
If all the previous tips did not help to get the desired result, you can use some additional functions that are offered by each search engine. This is especially true for advanced search capabilities.
The user is invited to a number of filters, the use of which allows you to adjust the specified conditions. For example, you can set a rigid sequence of words included in the query, indicate the location of their location on the page or specify the form of entry into the text. You can also set a pattern that the system should focus on in the search process, for example, a specific site.
The advanced search function, among other things, offers the ability to set the time of publication of interest, as well as the region. If the user is looking for a document (law, regulation, publication of a work or historical source), he can immediately indicate the required format.
Other search methods
The amount of data uploaded to the Network is increasing daily. Logical commands, advanced search, or the possession of specialized information retrieval skills are often just one of many tools to find the necessary information.
Among other ways to search for information on the Internet can be called the transition to hyperlinks found on a web page. This allows you to refine or expand existing information or discover new information. Another popular search method is by image. By uploading any photo to the search engine, the user can rely on the system to detect correspondence with other images on it and provide the necessary information about a person, object or phenomenon.
Finally, we should not forget that many companies or administrative bodies have their own websites, which may also contain the necessary information, which greatly facilitates the process of finding information on the Internet.