About Search Engines

The other day i read a report that British grandparents complained of being overlooked by their grandchildren who preferred to searching for answers and advices on the Internet.
The survey showed that 9 out of 10 UK grandparents claim that their children failed to ask them for advices and answers on even simple tasks such as how to boil an egg, iron a shirt and even details on their family history are being ask by younger generations from search engines which Google is the leader.
This report spark and arouse the genius in me to write something on these search engines which includes the meaning of search engines, their benefits and shortcomings and others that you will read in this article. Just sit back and relax, you can even cross your leg as am taking you to the world of search engines.

What are search engines

Search engines are online sites with a platform designed to help people find the information they are looking for on the World Wide Web. A search engine is made of of the following three major components.

Interface

This is also known as a web page. A typical example is Google search page where you will see a box where you input what you want the search engine to search for.

An index

This is like a library where the search engine stores all the information they have. It is from this search engine index that answers are taken to meet with searchers findings.

Crawlers or spiders

Search engines use program like spiders or crawlers to search through online pages looking for new links. When they find one, they follow the link, assess and gathered the information they need and then add it to their index. The secret of search engines having a wide variety of information is due to these program of crawlers and spiders.

Language of search engines

 In the real world, two or more people should speak the language they both understand for effective communication and before they can help themselves. Likewise, search engines need to clearly understand what information you are looking for. The traditional language we use in communicating with computer-based search engines is termed Boolean, named after the 19th century English Mathematician, George Boole and is classified into keywords and operators.
Words that we type in the search box are the keywords which are use to describe the information we are searching for and we use operators ( AND, OR and NOT ) to describe the relationship between our keywords. Though, the keywords concept is broad but i will like to give my own understanding of it in one of my future post.

Advantages of search engines

1. Easy access to information

Information is vital for our day to day activities. We need information to grow as an individual and business cannot thrive without obtaining information from both internal and external source. Such is the important of information that some people are now selling information online as a way of living. Such people are referred to ' information marketers ' and many of them have made huge income from this field. Search engine have enable people of all walks of life to have access to any information they might need. Decades ago, you have to buy a book, go to the library or ask people/elders or even pay before you can get vital informations but today, search engines have made every piece of information an ' open secret .'

2. A wide library of information

Search engines give us access to a wide range of information. I was surprised one day when I want to find the meaning of ' basil ' plant in my native language which is ' Yoruba.' I did not think that I could get the meaning but reluctantly i took my phone, go to google and type for the meaning of basil plant in Yoruba. I was so surprised when google brought out the results and the results showed that basil is "effirin" in Yoruba language. Even all the people around me were amazed. Such is the benefits of search engines that you can find information on the most common thing to the most hidden one. Truly i can say that search engines serve as the modern day world library .

3. Unlimited access to information
The presence of a large number of search engines enrich the Internet and make it possible for the users to have unlimited access to information. Availability of more than one search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, YouTube among others mean that information is not monopolized. If you don't find what you are looking for in one or you are not satisfied with the answer then you go to the other ones until you get the information that meet your taste.

4. Organization

Vast majority of information that are scattered in the various millions of websites and blogs are collated and organized in search engines index. This help the searchers to get a more precise set of information.
However, one of the disadvantages of search engines is that after searchers input their keywords to the search engine box, the result obtained often contain list after list of irrelevant web pages and information. You are still require to check through the list to find suitable ones and this can be frustrating sometimes.
Also, anybody can have access to any information at anytime which is not always good.

List of some famous search engines

Google web search

Is a platform of google which help you to search for information on the web. It is the most popular search engine in the world. You can go to the website by typing google.com in your web browser. On the main page you will see a text box where you will input your search keywords.


                                   

Bing

This is the search engine of Microsoft which was launched in June 2009. They collaborated with yahoo to have indirect access to yahoo index. Their major services includes Bing mobile, Bing maps & local, Bing travel e.t.c

Yahoo search

This should be the second most popular search engine in the world behind google. However, Google rivalry and hegemony is too strong for yahoo that it popularity is fast reducing this days. There was a news i heard in 2012 that Yahoo and Facebook are planning search partnership but i think with new bloggers emerging everyday and many of them hoping to earn from Google Adsense, Google dominance in the search engine arena is here to stay and will rule for the foreseeable future.

YouTube

Is a video sharing website created by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim who were early employees of Paypal. It is designed for users to upload, view and share videos. YouTube was bought by Google in November 2006 for over $1.6 billion, thus making YouTube a subsidiary of Google.

WikiHow

Is a web-based and wiki-based community of massive contents on how- to-guides. It boost over 143,000 how-to articles and readers of over 35 million from over 200 countries who visited it over 44million times per month.

eHow

Is also an online how-to guide site but broader than WikiHow. It boost over 1 million articles and 170,000 videos created by paid writers also know as  freelancers. No wonder, eHow is often referred to as "content mill"

Wikipedia

Was created in 2001 and the contents are contributed by contributors who write for free. It has since grow into one of the biggest reference website attracting over 470 million visitors per month, more than 77000 contributors, over 22 million articles in 285 languages among which over 4 million are English written articles.


                                


I hope you really enjoy the article and equally learn as well. After reading this article do you agree with me that Google and Co. are the wise men of our modern generation?

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