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SEARCH ENGINES AND RANKING

SEARCH ENGINES

Search engine scans its database and return a file with links to websites containing the word or words specified. Because these databases are very large, search engines often return thousands of results. So, to use search engines effectively, it is essential to apply techniques that narrow down the results and push the most relevant pages on the top of lists.

Search engines are programs that search documents for specified keywords and return a list of the documents where the keywords were found.

A search engine is really a general class of programs, however, the term is often used to specifically describe systems like Google, Bing and Yahoo! Search that enable users to search for documents on the World Wide Web.

Generic structure of a Search Engine ---

• Gathering “Crawling”

• Maintaining Database

• Indexing

• Querying

• Ranking

Web Search Engines

Typically, Web search engines work by sending out a spider to fetch as many documents as possible. Another program, called an indexer, then reads these documents and creates an index based on the words contained in each document. Each search engine uses a proprietary algorithm to create its indices such that, ideally, only meaningful results are returned for each query.

How web search engines work ---

A search engine operates in the following order:

1. Web crawling

2. Indexing

3. Searching

Web search engines work by storing information about many web pages, which they retrieve from the HTML markup of the pages. These pages are retrieved by a Web crawler (sometimes also known as a spider) — an automated Web crawler which follows every link on the site.

The search engine then analyzes the contents of each page to determine how it should be indexed (for example, words can be extracted from the titles, page content, headings, or special fields called meta tags). Data about web pages are stored in an index database for use in later queries. A query from a user can be a single word. The index helps find information relating to the query as quickly as possible. 

Some search engines, such as Google, store all or part of the source page (referred to as a cache) as well as information about the web pages, whereas others, such as AltaVista, store every word of every page they find. 

High-level architecture of a standard Web crawler ---

When a user enters a query into a search engine (typically by using keywords), the engine examines its index and provides a listing of best-matching web pages according to its criteria, usually with a short summary containing the document's title and sometimes parts of the text. The index is built from the information stored with the data and the method by which the information is indexed.

From 2007 the search engine has allowed one to search by date by clicking "Search tools" in the rightmost column of the initial search results page, and then selecting the desired date range “Any time”, for example: past hour, past 24 hours, past week, past month, past year etc.

Most search engines support the use of the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT to further specify the search query. Boolean operators are for literal searches that allow the user to refine and extend the terms of the search. The engine looks for the words or phrases exactly as entered. Some search engines provide an advanced feature called proximity search, which allows users to define the distance between keywords. There is also concept-based searching where the research involves using statistical analysis on pages containing the words or phrases you search for. As well, natural language queries allow the user to type a question in the same form one would ask it to a human. A site like this would be .

The usefulness of a search engine depends on the relevance of the result set it gives back. While there may be millions of web pages that include a particular word or phrase, some pages may be more relevant, popular, or authoritative than others. Most search engines employ methods to rank the results to provide the "best" results first. How a search engine decides which pages are the best matches, and what order the results should be shown in, varies widely from one engine to another. 

The methods also change over time as Internet usage changes and new techniques evolve. There are two main types of search engine that have evolved: one is a system of predefined and hierarchically ordered keywords that humans have programmed extensively. The other is a system that generates an "inverted index" by analyzing texts it locates. This first form relies much more heavily on the computer itself to do the bulk of the work.

Most Web search engines are commercial ventures supported by advertising revenue and thus some of them allow advertisers to have their listings ranked higher in search results for a fee. Search engines that do not accept money for their search results make money by running search related ads alongside the regular search engine results. The search engines make money every time someone clicks on one of these ads.

Some popular search engines ---

Google

Bing

Yahoo! Search

Ask

Aol Search

Wow

WebCrawler

MyWebSearch

Infospace

Info

DuckDuckGo

Blekko

Contenko

Dogpile

Alhea

Yippy

Webopedia

Mahalo

HotBot

AltaVista

AlltheWeb

Go

Looksmart

Excite

Metacrawler

Search

Northern light

Onekey

Market share ---

Google is the world's most popular search engine, with a marketshare of 68.69 per cent. Baidu comes in a distant second, answering 17.17 per cent online queries.

The world's most popular search engines are:

|Search engine |Market share in July 2014 |

|Google |68.69% |  |

|Baidu |17.17% |  |

|Yahoo! |6.74% |  |

|Bing |6.22% |  |

|Excite |0.22% |  |

|Ask |0.13% |  |

|AOL |0.13% |  |

Search engine bias ---

Although search engines are programmed to rank websites based on some combination of their popularity and relevancy, empirical studies indicate various political, economic, and social biases in the information they provide. These biases can be a direct result of economic and commercial processes (e.g., companies that advertise with a search engine can become also more popular in its organic search results), and political processes (e.g., the removal of search results to comply with local laws).

Google Bombing is one example of an attempt to manipulate search results for political, social or commercial reasons.

The terms Google bomb and Googlewashing refer to the practice of causing a web page to rank highly in search engine results for unrelated or off-topic search terms by linking heavily. In contrast, search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving the search engine listings of web pages for relevant search terms.

Customized results and filter bubbles ---

Many search engines such as Google and Bing provide customized results based on the user's activity history. This leads to an effect that has been called a filter bubble. The term describes a phenomenon in which websites use algorithms to selectively guess what information a user would like to see, based on information about the user (such as location, past click behaviour and search history). As a result, websites tend to show only information that agrees with the user's past viewpoint, effectively isolating the user in a bubble that tends to exclude contrary information. Prime examples are Google's personalized search results and Facebook's personalized news stream. 

The term was coined by internet activist Eli Pariser in his book by the same name; according to Pariser, users get less exposure to conflicting viewpoints and are isolated intellectually in their own informational bubble. Pariser related an example in which one user searched Google for "BP" and got investment news about British Petroleum while another searcher got information about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and that the two search results pages were "strikingly different". The bubble effect may have negative implications for civic discourse, according to Pariser, but there are contrasting views suggesting the effect is minimal and addressable. The bubble effect may have negative implications for civic discourse (Public discussion), according to Pariser.

Since this problem has been identified, competing search engines have emerged that seek to avoid this problem by not tracking or "bubbling" users.

Web crawler

A Web crawler is an Internet bot  (web robot) that systematically browses the World Wide Web, typically for the purpose of Web indexing. A Web crawler may also be called a Web spider, an ant, an automatic indexer or a Web scutter.

An Internet bot, also known as web robot, WWW robot or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone.

An Internet bot, also known as web robot, WWW robot or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone. The largest use of bots is in web spidering, in which an automated script fetches, analyses and files information from web servers at many times the speed of a human. Each server can have a file called robots.txt, containing rules for the spidering of that server that the bot is supposed to obey or be removed.

A crawler is a program that visits web sites and reads their pages and other information in order to create entries for a search engine index.

Web search engines and some other sites use Web crawling or spidering software to update their web content or indexes of others sites' web content. Web crawlers can copy all the pages they visit for later processing by a search engine that indexes the downloaded pages so that users can search them much more quickly.

Crawlers can validate hyperlinks and HTML code. They can also be used for web scraping (Web scraping or web harvesting or web data extraction) is a computer software technique of extracting information from websites.

A Web crawler starts with a list of URLs to visit, called the seeds. As the crawler visits these URLs, it identifies all the hyperlinks in the page and adds them to the list of URLs to visit, called the crawl frontier. URLs from the frontier are recursively visited according to a set of policies. If the crawler is performing archiving of websites it copies and saves the information as it goes. Such archives are usually stored such that they can be viewed, read and navigated as they were on the live web, but are preserved as ‘snapshots'.

The large volume implies that the crawler can only download a limited number of the Web pages within a given time, so it needs to prioritize its downloads. The high rate of change implies that the pages might have already been updated or even deleted.

The number of possible URLs crawled being generated by server-side software has also made it difficult for web crawlers to avoid retrieving duplicate content.

A crawler must carefully choose at each step which pages to visit next.

Crawling policy ---

The behavior of a Web crawler is the outcome of a combination of policies ---

• Selection Policy

o Restricting followed links

o URL normalization

o Path-ascending crawling

o Focused crawling

▪ Academic-focused crawler

• Re-visit Policy

• Politeness Policy

• Parallelization Policy

A Selection Policy states which pages to download,

A Re-Visit Policy states when to check for changes to the pages,

A Politeness Policy states how to avoid overloading Web sites, and

A Parallelization Policy states how to coordinate distributed web crawlers.

Selection policy ---

Given the current size of the Web, even large search engines cover only a portion of the publicly available part. As a crawler always downloads just a fraction of the Web pages, it is highly desirable that the downloaded fraction contains the most relevant pages and not just a random sample of the Web.

This requires a metric of importance for prioritizing Web pages.

The importance of a page is a function of its intrinsic quality, its popularity in terms of links or visits, and even of its URL (the latter is the case of vertical search engines restricted to a single top-level domain, or search engines restricted to a fixed Web site).

Designing a good selection policy has an added difficulty: it must work with partial information, as the complete set of Web pages is not known during crawling.

Restricting followed links ---

MIME types are referred to the non-ASCII parts of email messages that were composed using the MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) specification. They are also sometimes referred to as Content-types. MIME is an Internet media type, it is a standard identifier used on the Internet to indicate the type of data that a file contains. Common uses include the following:

• email clients use them to identify attachment files,

• web browsers use them to determine how to display or output files that are not in HTML format,

• search engines use them to classify data files on the web.

A crawler may only want to seek out HTML pages and avoid all other MIME types. In order to request only HTML resources, a crawler may make an HTTP HEAD request to determine a Web resource's MIME type before requesting the entire resource with a GET request. To avoid making numerous HEAD requests, a crawler may examine the URL and only request a resource if the URL ends with certain characters such as .html, .htm, .asp, .aspx, .php, .jsp, .jspx or a slash. This strategy may cause numerous HTML Web resources to be unintentionally skipped.

Some crawlers may also avoid requesting any resources that have a "?" in them (are dynamically produced) in order to avoid spider traps that may cause the crawler to download an infinite number of URLs from a Web site. This strategy is unreliable if the site uses a rewrite engine to simplify its URLs.

URL normalization

Crawlers usually perform some type of URL normalization in order to avoid crawling the same resource more than once. The term URL normalization, also called URL canonicalization, refers to the process of modifying and standardizing a URL in a consistent manner. There are several types of normalization that may be performed including conversion of URLs to lowercase, removal of "." and ".." segments, and adding trailing slashes to the non-empty path component.

Path-ascending crawling ---

Some crawlers intend to download as many resources as possible from a particular web site. So path-ascending crawler was introduced that would ascend to every path in each URL that it intends to crawl.

For example, when given a seed URL of , it will attempt to crawl /hamster/monkey/, /hamster/, and /. Cothey found that a path-ascending crawler was very effective in finding isolated resources, or resources for which no inbound link would have been found in regular crawling.

Focused crawling ---

The importance of a page for a crawler can also be expressed as a function of the similarity of a page to a given query. Web crawlers that attempt to download pages that are similar to each other are called focused crawler or topical crawlers.

Academic-focused crawler ---

An example of the focused crawlers are academic crawlers, which crawls free-access academic related documents, such as the citeseerxbot, which is the crawler of CiteSeerX search engine. CiteSeer was a public search engine and digital library for scientific and academic papers, primarily in the fields of computer and information science that has been replaced byCiteSeerX

Other academic search engines are Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Search etc. Because most academic papers are published in PDF formats, such kind of crawler is particularly interested in crawling PDF, PostScript files, Microsoft Word including their zipped formats.

Identifying whether these documents are academic or not is challenging and can add a significant overhead to the crawling process, so this is performed as a post crawling process using machine learning or regular expression algorithms. Other academic crawlers may download plain text and HTML files, that contains metadata of academic papers, such as titles, papers, and abstracts. This increases the overall number of papers, but a significant fraction may not provide free PDF downloads.

Re-visit policy ---

The Web has a very dynamic nature, and crawling a fraction of the Web can take weeks or months. By the time a Web crawler has finished its crawl, many events could have happened, including creations, updates and deletions.

From the search engine's point of view, there is a cost associated with not detecting an event, and thus having an outdated copy of a resource. The most-used cost functions are freshness and age.

Freshness: This is a binary measure that indicates whether the local copy is accurate or not. The freshness of a page p in the repository at time t is defined as:

[pic]

Age: This is a measure that indicates how outdated the local copy is. The age of a page p in the repository, at time t is defined as:

[pic]

The objective of the crawler is to keep the average freshness of pages in its collection as high as possible, or to keep the average age of pages as low as possible. These objectives are not equivalent: in the first case, the crawler is just concerned with how many pages are out-dated, while in the second case, the crawler is concerned with how old the local copies of pages are.

Two simple re-visiting policies are ---

Uniform policy: This involves re-visiting all pages in the collection with the same frequency, regardless of their rates of change.

Proportional policy: This involves re-visiting more often the pages that change more frequently. The visiting frequency is directly proportional to the (estimated) change frequency.

(In both cases, the repeated crawling order of pages can be done either in a random or a fixed order.)

Politeness policy ---

Crawlers can retrieve data much quicker and in greater depth than human searchers, so they can have a crippling impact on the performance of a site. Needless to say, if a single crawler is performing multiple requests per second and/or downloading large files, a server would have a hard time keeping up with requests from multiple crawlers.

The use of Web crawlers is useful for a number of tasks, but comes with a price for the general community.

The costs of using Web crawlers include:

• network resources, as crawlers require considerable bandwidth and operate with a high degree of parallelism during a long period of time;

• server overload, especially if the frequency of accesses to a given server is too high;

• poorly written crawlers, which can crash servers or routers, or which download pages they cannot handle; and

• personal crawlers that, if deployed by too many users, can disrupt networks and Web servers.

A partial solution to these problems is the robots exclusion protocol, also known as the robots.txt protocol that is a standard for administrators to indicate which parts of their Web servers should not be accessed by crawlers. This standard does not include a suggestion for the interval of visits to the same server, even though this interval is the most effective way of avoiding server overload. Recently commercial search engines like Google, Ask Jeeves, MSN and Yahoo! Search are able to use an extra "Crawl-delay:" parameter in the robots.txt file to indicate the number of seconds to delay between requests.

For those using Web crawlers for research purposes, a more detailed cost-benefit analysis is needed and ethical considerations should be taken into account when deciding where to crawl and how fast to crawl.

Parallelization policy ---

A parallel crawler is a crawler that runs multiple processes in parallel. The goal is to maximize the download rate while minimizing the overhead from parallelization and to avoid repeated downloads of the same page. To avoid downloading the same page more than once, the crawling system requires a policy for assigning the new URLs discovered during the crawling process, as the same URL can be found by two different crawling processes.

Crawling the deep web ---

A vast amount of web pages lie in the deep or invisible web. These pages are typically only accessible by submitting queries to a database, and regular crawlers are unable to find these pages if there are no links that point to them. Google's Sitemaps protocol and mod oai are intended to allow discovery of these deep-Web resources.

Deep web crawling also multiplies the number of web links to be crawled. Some crawlers only take some of the URLs in  form. In some cases, such as the Googlebot, Web crawling is done on all text contained inside the hypertext content, tags, or text.

Web crawler bias ---

A recent study based on a large scale analysis of robots.txt files showed that certain web crawlers were preferred over others, with Google bot being the most preferred web crawler.

10 tips for smarter, more efficient Internet searching

Google has been fanatical about speed. There is little doubt that it has built an incredibly fast and thorough search engine. Unfortunately, the human element of the Internet search equation is often overlooked.

1: Use unique, specific terms

It is simply amazing how many Web pages are returned when performing a search. To reduce the number of pages returned, use unique terms that are specific to the subject you are researching.

2: Use the minus operator (-) to narrow the search

Terms with multiple meanings can return a lot of unwanted results. The rarely used but powerful minus operator, equivalent to a Boolean NOT, can remove many unwanted results. For example, when searching for the insect caterpillar, references to the company Caterpillar, Inc. will also be returned. Use Caterpillar -Inc to exclude references to the company or Caterpillar -Inc -Cat to further refine the search.

3: Use quotation marks for exact phrases

Using quotation marks around a phrase will return only those exact words in that order. It's one of the best ways to limit the pages returned. Example: "Be nice to everyone".

4: Don't use common words and punctuation

Common terms like a, and, the are called stop words and are usually ignored. Punctuation is also typically ignored. But there are exceptions. Common words and punctuation marks should be used when searching for a specific phrase inside quotes. There are cases when common words like the are significant. For instance, Raven and The Raven return entirely different results.

5: Capitalization

Most search engines do not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase, even within quotation marks. The following are all equivalent:

• technology

• Technology

• TECHNOLOGY

• "technology"

• "Technology"

6: Drop the suffixes

It's usually best to enter the base word so that you don't exclude relevant pages. For example, bird and not birds, walk and not walked. One exception is if you are looking for sites that focus on the act of walking, enter the whole term walking.

7: Maximize AutoComplete

Ordering search terms from general to specific in the search box will display helpful results in a drop-down list and is the most efficient way to use AutoComplete. Selecting the appropriate item as it appears will save time typing. You have several choices for how the AutoComplete feature works:

Use Google AutoComplete. The standard Google start page will display a drop-down list of suggestions supplied by the Google search engine. This option can be a handy way to discover similar, related searches. For example, typing in Tucson fast will not only bring up the suggestion Tucson fast food but also Tucson fast food coupons. 

Use browser AutoComplete. Use this Google start page to disable the Google AutoComplete feature and display a list of your previous searches in a drop-down box. The browser's AutoComplete feature must be turned on for this option to work.

Google Chrome users can follow the steps given below for turning on the “Autocomplete Feature” ---

1. Click on the "wrench"  [pic] or "Menu" [pic] icon in the top right corner.

2. Click Settings

3. At the bottom of Settings, click Show advanced settings...

4. Click Manage Autofill settings under Passwords and forms.

5. In the Autofill settings window, click the Add new street addressbutton.

6. Fill out all address settings you want to be saved and click ok.

7. Once complete try out your Autofill using the example below test form. To enter the values double click on any of the below fields and then select the name of your address.

8: Customize your searches

There are several other less well known ways to limit the number of results returned and reduce your search time:

• The plus operator (+): As mentioned above, stop words are typically ignored by the search engine. The plus operator tells the search engine to include those words in the result set. Example: tall +and short will return results that include the word and.

• The tide operator (~): Include a tilde in front of a word to return results that include synonyms. The tilde operator does not work well for all terms and sometimes not at all. Examples: ~HTML to get results for HTML with synonyms; ~HTML -HTML to get synonyms only for HTML.

• The wildcard operator (*): Google calls it the fill in the blank operator. For example, amusement * will return pages with amusement and any other term(s) the Google search engine deems (judges) relevant. You can't use wildcards for parts of words. So for example,amusement p* is invalid.

• The OR operator (OR) or (|): Use this operator to return results with either of two terms. For example happy joy will return pages with both happy and joy, while happy | joy will return pages with either happy or joy.

• Numeric ranges: You can refine searches that use numeric terms by returning a specific range, but you must supply the unit of measurement. Examples: Windows XP 2003..2005, PC $700 $800.

• Site search: Many Web sites have their own site search feature, but you may find that Google site search will return more pages. When doing research, it's best to go directly to the source, and site search is a great way to do that. Example: site: rapid storage technology.

• Related sites: For example, related: can be used to find sites similar to YouTube.

• Change your preferences: Search preferences can be set globally by clicking on the gear icon in the upper-right corner and selecting Search Settings.

• Forums-only search: Under the Google logo on the left side of the search result page, click More | Discussions or go to Google Groups. Forums are great places to look for solutions to technical problems.

• Advanced searches: Click the Advanced Search button by the search box on the Google start or results page to refine your search by date, country, amount, language, or other criteria. Go to Google’s Advanced Search page or, after performing a basic search, click the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the results page and choose Advanced Search from the pop-up menu.

• [pic]image of gear icon

• Wonder Wheel: The Google Wonder Wheel can visually assist you as you refine your search from general to specific. s).

9: Use browser history

One way is to remember the exact words used for the search and then scan the results for the right site, but there is an easier way. If you remember the general date and time of the search you can look through the browser history to find the Web page.

10: Set a time limit -- then change tactics

Sometimes, you never can find what you are looking for. Start an internal clock, and when a certain amount of time has elapsed without results, stop beating your head against the wall. It's time to try something else:

• Use a different search engine, like Yahoo!, Bing, Startpage, or Lycos.

• Ask a peer.

• Call support.

• Ask a question in the appropriate forum.

• Use search experts who can find the answer for you.

Tips for searching the Internet ---

• Use the search box

• Use search suggestions

• Use the Address bar

• Use more than one search provider

• Search more efficiently

• Find words or phrases on a webpage

The Internet contains a vast collection of information, but finding what you're looking for can be a challenge. Here are a few tips to help you search the web more effectively.

Use the search box

In the Internet Explorer search box, type a keyword or phrase and then press Enter (or press Alt+Enter to display the search results in a new tab).

[pic]Internet Explorer search box

Tip

• Press Ctrl+E to go to the search box without using the mouse.

Use search suggestions

Some search providers offer search term suggestions as you type. When you add a new search provider, you can choose to use search suggestions if the provider offers them. For more information on how to turn search suggestions on or off, see Change or choose a search provider in Internet Explorer.

Use the Address bar

In the Internet Explorer Address bar, type Find, Go, or ? followed by a keyword, website name, or phrase, and then press Enter. If you want the search results to display in a new tab, press Alt+Enter after typing the phrase. The Address bar uses your default search provider.

If you don't find what you're looking for with a particular search provider, you can search using a different one. The Internet Explorer search box lets you add additional search providers and switch among them to improve your search results. You can quickly change which search provider to use on a search by clicking the provider's icon below the search box.

Search more efficiently

Here are a few ideas for improving the results of searches:

• Use specific words rather than generic categories. For example, instead of searching for "dogs," search for a specific breed of dog.

• Use quotation marks to search for specific phrases. Surrounding terms with quotation marks limits the search results to only those web pages that contain the exact phrase you've specified. Without the quotation marks, the results will include any page that contains the words you've used, regardless of what order those words are in.

• Use the minus (-) sign before a keyword to tell search providers to exclude pages with that term. Using a minus sign will retrieve web pages that don't include the word. It's important not to include any spaces between the signs and the search terms (for example, -Bogart, not - Bogart).

• Eliminate common words such as "a," "my," or "the," unless you're looking for a specific title. If the word is part of something you're looking for (a song title, for example), include the common word and surround the phrase with quotation marks.

• Use synonyms or alternative search terms. Be creative or use a thesaurus for ideas. Type thesaurus in the search box to find an online thesaurus.

• Search only a specific website or domain. To narrow the search to a specific site, type the search term you're looking for followed by site: and the address of the website you want to search. For example, to search the Microsoft website for information about viruses, type virus site: (with no spaces between site: and the URL).

• Use a specialty search engine or provider, such as MSN Image search, to look for pictures. Many websites offer their own special searches for anything from shopping to hobbies. Internet Explorer can detect specialty search providers on some websites, which you can add to your list of search providers.

Top of page

Find words or phrases on a webpage

Internet Explorer can help you find a specific word or phrase on a webpage. Here's how:

To find a word or phrase on a webpage in Internet Explorer 8

1. Press Ctrl+F to open the Find box below the tab row.

2. Type a word or phrase, and then press Enter to locate the first match.

3. Click the Highlight All Matches button to show or hide all matches on the page.

4. To filter the matches, click Options, and then click one or both of the following:

• Match Whole Word Only

• Match Case

5. Click Next or Previous to move from one matched word or phrase to another.

[pic]Internet Explorer8 Find box

To find a word or phrase on a webpage in Internet Explorer 7

1. Press Ctrl+F to open the Find dialog box.

2. Type a word or phrase in the Find box, and then press Enter to locate the first match on the page.

3. To filter the matches, select or clear the Match whole word only or Match case check boxes.

4. Click Next or Previous to move from one matched word or phrase to another.

Ten essential tips for searching the Web ---

Finding just the right page among the billions on the Web requires not only a search engine but also a bit of know-how. Here is a selection of tips for searching the Web ---

1. Search for a phrase

To search for an exact, complete phrase and not just its constituent words, put it in quotation marks. For example, instead of typing at sunrise on my birthdaytype ”at sunrise on my birthday”. The number of hits will shrink dramatically, as you’ll see only pages that include that exact phrase.

2. Be more specific

If you want to find articles about managing bookmarks in Safari on an iPhone running iOS 7, don’t search for just manage bookmarks. Throw all those terms in:manage bookmarks safari iphone ios 7. The more information you provide, the more useful your results are likely to be.

3. Exclude a word

To make sure your search for information on the connector your iPhone uses doesn’t return matches about an atmospheric phenomenon or a fictional race car, put a hyphen (-) in front of terms that should disqualify a page from appearing in Google’s results—for example, lightning -thunder -storm -McQueen.

[pic]Get more specific by excluding certain words from your search.

4. Use your own words

If you visit  in Google Chrome, you can click the microphone icon on the right side of the search field and speak your search terms out loud. As soon as you finish talking, Google displays matching results and sometimes offers a summary aloud.

[pic]In Google Chrome, go to the Google homepage, click the microphone icon (top), and start talking. Whatever you say appears on screen (bottom), followed shortly thereafter by matching search results.

5. Try an advanced search

If you want much more control over your searches, such as specifying which geographic regions to search in, how recently created a page should be, or the page’s reading level, go to Google’s Advanced Search page or, after performing a basic search, click the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the results page and choose Advanced Search from the pop-up menu.

[pic]Google’s Advanced Search page lets you fill out a form with options for a detailed, specific search.

6. Convert, calculate, and more

You can also use Google to find all sorts of information besides lists of webpages. Google can handle calculations (try 104 * 36.8), currency conversions (185 dollars in euros), time-zone conversions (time in Paris), weather forecasts (weather San Diego), word definitions (define: pedantic), and a great many other things.

[pic]You don’t need a calculator (or a calculator app) if you have a browser open.

7. Learn from the source

A great place to learn dozens of additional tips for using Google is Google itself. For example, Google’s “Basic search help” and “Tips & Tricks” pages have loads of tricks and shortcuts you can use.

8. Simplify Google URLs

One thing I’ve come to dislike about Google, however, is that the links on its results page are all Google URLs that redirect you to the original page. For example, if you search for macworld, the first hit is for . However, if you try to copy the URL, it’ll look something like this:



And, depending on your browser, this sort of URL may also throw off your browsing history, making it difficult to see which sites you’ve been to.

Luckily, you can solve this problem with a browser extension. My pick for Apple’s Safari is Shaun Inman’s free Detox. (It was originally designed for Twitter, but it works great for Google, too.) For Google Chrome, first install the freeTampermonkey, and then add the script Scrub Google Redirect Links. For Mozilla Firefox, try Wladimir Palant’s free Google/Yandex search link fix.

9. Use another search engine

Even the best Google search won’t help you find pages that Google hasn’t indexed, or items that are on page 5987 out of 28,001. If Google isn’t cutting it, you have alternatives. Competitors, including Bing, Yahoo, , and DuckDuckGo, may point you to sites that don’t show up in Google. And because each search engine prioritizes search results differently, the page you’re looking for may be more prominent in one than in another. If you get stuck, trying the same search in another engine may do the trick.

10. Try a metasearch

If you frequently need to search across multiple engines (and, perhaps, on highly specific databases that store information not indexed in general-purpose public search engines), you might be a good candidate for DevonAgent Pro (4 out of 5 rating), which can query many sites and services at once and summarize search results in a way that exposes connections between related concepts.

How to search on Google ---

Learn a few tips and tricks to help you easily find information on Google.

Tip 1: Keep it simple

No matter what you're looking for, try to start with a simple search like [where's the closest airport?]. You can always add a few descriptive words if necessary.

If you're looking for a place or product in a specific location, add the location. For example, [bakery seattle]. 

Tip 2: Search using your voice

Tired of typing? Click the [pic] microphone icon in Chrome's search box to search by voice.

Tip 3: Use web friendly words

Use words that are most likely to appear on websites. For example, instead of saying [my head hurts], say [headache], because that’s the word a medical site would use.

Tip 4: Don’t worry about the little things

• Spelling. Google's spell checker automatically uses the most common spelling of a given word, whether or not you spell it correctly. 

• Capitalization. A search for [New York Times] is the same as a search for [new york times].

• Punctuation. Most punctuation, like ?!,.%^*()[]\, is ignored when you search.

Tip 5: Find quick answers

For many searches, Google will do the work for you and show an answer to your question on the search results. Some features, like information about sports teams, aren't available in all regions. 

[pic]

• Weather. Search [weather] to see the weather in your location or add a city name after weather to find weather for a certain place.

• Dictionary. Put [define] in front of any word to see its definition. 

• Calculations. Enter a math equation like [3*9123], or solve complex graphing equations.

• Unit conversions. Enter any conversion, like [3 dollars in euros].

• Sports. Search for the name of your team to see a schedule, game scores and more. 

• Quick facts. Search for the name of a celebrity, location, movie, or song to find important information. 

Become a search expert

Want more tips and tricks to help you search like a pro? Check out the links below to learn more advanced search techniques.

• Advanced Search

• Image search

• Search operators

• Search tools and filters

• Punctuation and symbols in search

Tips to Effective Internet Searching

1. Use the tabs

The first tip is to use the tabs in Google search. On the top of every search are a number of tabs. Usually you’ll see Web, Image, News, and More. Using these tabs, you can help define what kind of search you need to do. If you need images, use the Image tab. If you are looking for a recent news article, use the News tab. It’s rudimentary and most people use the tabs already. If you are not, then it’s highly recommended to get associated with them. They can cut search times dramatically if utilized properly.

2. Use quotes

When searching for something specific, try using quotes to minimize the guesswork for Google search. When you put your search parameters in quotes, it tells the search engine to search for the whole phrase. For instance, if you search for Puppy Dog Sweaters, the engine will search for content that contains those three words in any order. However, if you search “Puppy Dog Sweaters”, it will search for that phrase exactly as you typed it. This can help locate specific information that may be buried under other content if not sorted out correctly.

3. Use a hyphen to exclude words

Sometimes you may find yourself searching for a word with an ambiguous meaning. An example is Mustang. When you Google search for Mustang, you may get results for both the car made by Ford or the horse. If you want to cut one out, use the hyphen to tell the engine to ignore content with one of the other. See the example below.

• Mustang -cars

This tells the search engine to search for mustangs but to remove any results that have the word “car” in it. It can be wildly helpful when finding information about something without getting information about something else.

4. Use a colon to search specific sites

There may be an instance where you need to Google search for articles or content on a certain website. The syntax is very simple and we’ll show you below.

• Sidney Crosby site:

This will search for all content about famous hockey player Sidney Crosby, but only on . All other search results will be removed. If you need to find specific content on a particular site, this is the shortcut you can use.

5. Find a page that links to another page

This Google search tip is a little obscure. Instead of searching for a specific page, you’re searching for a page that links to a specific page. Think about it this way. If you want to see who cited a New York Times article on their site, you would use this trick to find all the sites that link to it. The syntax is below.

• link:

That will return all pages that link to the New York Times official website. The URL on the right side can be practically anything. Be aware, though, that the more specific it is, the fewer results you’ll get. We know not a lot of people will likely use this Google search trick, but it could be very useful for some.

6. Use the asterisk wildcard

The asterisk wildcard is one of the most useful ones on the list. Here’s how it works. When you use an asterisk in a search term on Google search, it will leave a placeholder that may be automatically filled by the search engine later. This is a brilliant way to find song lyrics if you don’t know all the words. Let’s look at the syntax.

• “Come * right now * me”

To you or me, that may look like nonsense. However, Google search will search for that phrase knowing that the asterisks can be any word. More often than not, you’ll find they are lyrics to The Beatles song “Come Together” and that’s what the search will tell you.

7. Find sites that are similar to other sites

This is a unique one that could be used by practically everyone if they knew it existed. Let’s say you have a favorite website. It can be anything. However, that website is getting a little bit boring and you want to find other websites like it. You would use this trick. Below is the syntax.

• related:

If you search that above, you won’t find a link to Amazon. Instead, you’ll find links to online stores like Amazon. Sites like Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, and others that sell physical items online. It’s a powerful Google search tool that can help you find new sites to browse.

8. Use Google search to do math

As a college student, I can attest that I use this one rather frequently. Google search can actually do math for you. This is a rather complex one to describe because it can be used in so many ways. You can ask it basic questions or some more difficult ones. It is important to note that it won’t solve all math problems, but it will solve a good number of them. Here are a couple of examples of the syntax.

• 8 * 5 + 5

• Planck’s Consant

If you search the first one, it’ll return 45. It will also show a calculator that you can use to find answers to more questions. This is handy if you need to do some quick math but don’t want to do it in your head. If you search the second term, it will return the number value of Planck’s Constant. So it can do math, but it can also help you solve math problems by showing values for known mathematical terms.

9. Search for multiple words at once

Google search is flexible. It knows you may not find what you want by searching only a single word or phrase. Thus, it lets you search for multiples. By using this trick, you can search for one word or phrase along with a second word or phrase. This can help narrow down your search to help you find exactly what you’re looking for. Here is the syntax.

• “Best ways to prepare for a job interview” OR “How to prepare for a job interview”

By searching that, you will search both phrases. Remember the quotes tip above? It’s being used here as well. In this instance, these two exact phrases will be searched. It can be done by word too, like the example below.

• chocolate OR white chocolate

This will search for pages that have either chocolate or white chocolate!

10. Search a range of numbers

Searching for a range of numbers is another tip we don’t anticipate a lot of people using. The people that do use it, though, will probably use it quite a bit. People interested in money or statistics will find this tip particularly useful. Essentially, you use two dots and a number to let Google search know you’re looking for a specific range of numbers. Like the syntax below.

• What teams have won the Stanley Cup ..2004

• 41..43

In the first instance, the search will toss back the team that won the Stanley Cup in 2004. The two dots with only one number will tell the search that you don’t need anything before or after 2004. This can help narrow down searches to a specific number to improve search results. In the second, Google will search for the numbers 41, 42, and 43. It is obscure, but wildly useful if you happen to need to search for numbers like this.

11. Keep it simple

Now we’re getting into the general tips. Google search knows how to search for a lot of things. What this means is you don’t need to be too specific. If you need a pizza place nearby, use this to search.

• Pizza places nearby

Google search will grab your location and deliver a variety of results about pizza places that are near you.

12. Gradually add search terms

There will come a time when Google search doesn’t shovel out the results you expect. In this instance, keeping it simple may not be the best option. As Google itself suggests, the best method is to start with something simple then gradually get more complicated. See the example below.

• First try: job interviews

• Second try: prepare for job interviews

• Third try: how to prepare for a job interview

This will gradually refine the search to bring you fewer, more targeted terms. The reason you don’t go straight from the first try to the third try is because you may miss what you’re looking for by skipping the second step. Millions of websites phrase the same information in a number of different ways; using this technique lets you search as many of them as possible to find the best info.

13. Use words that websites would use

This is a very important one. When people use Google search to hunt the web, they generally search for things using the same language that they would use for speaking. Unfortunately, websites don’t say things the way people do; instead, they try to use language that sounds professional. Let’s look at some examples.

• “I have a flat tire” could be replaced by “repair a flat tire.”

• “My head hurts” could be replaced by “headache relief.”

The list goes on and on. When searching, try to use terminology you would find on a professional website. This will help you get more reliable results.

14. Use important words only

The way Google search works is to take what you search for and match it with keywords in online content. When you search for too many words, it may limit your results. That means it may actually take you longer to find what you’re looking for. Thus, it is apropos to use only the important words when searching for something. Let’s see an example.

• Don’t use: Where can I find a Chinese restaurant that delivers.

• Instead try: Chinese restaurants nearby.

• Or: Chinese restaurants near me.

Doing this can help Google find what you need without all the clutter. So remember, keep it simple and use important words only.

15. Google search has shortcuts

A number of commands can be entered to give you instantaneous results. Like the math example above, Google can immediately give you the information you need that is displayed right at the top of the search results. This can save time and effort so you don’t have to click a bunch of bothersome links. Here are a few examples of some commands you can enter into Google.

• Weather *zip code* – This will show you the weather in the given zip code. You can also use town and city names instead of area codes, but it may not be as accurate if there are multiple area codes in the city.

• What is *celebrity name* Bacon Number – This is a fun little one that will tell you how many connections any given celebrity has to famed actor Kevin Bacon. The popular joke, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, is that no actor is more than 6 connections away from Kevin Bacon. Mark Zuckerberg has a Bacon Number of 3.

• The math example posted above is another one.

• What is the definition of *word* or Define: *word* – This will display the definition of a word.

• Time *place* – This will display the time in whatever place you type in.

• You can check any stock by typing its ticker name into Google. If you search for GOOG, it will check the stock prices for Google.

These quick commands can take a web search that is usually multiple clicks and condense it into a single search. This is very helpful for information you need repeatedly.

16. Spelling doesn’t necessarily matter

Google search has gotten a lot smarter over the years. These days, you don’t even need to spell words correctly. As long as it’s pretty close, Google can usually figure out what it means. Here are some examples.

• If you search “Nver Gna Gve Yo Up” Google will automatically assume you mean to search for “Never Gonna Give You Up.” If by chance your misspelling was intentional, Google gives you the option to search for the misspelled term instead.

This trick is great if you happen to forget how to spell something or are not altogether sure how something is spelled. It can also be helpful when searching for obscure words. This applies to capitalization and grammar as well.

17. Use descriptive words

Pretty much everything can be described in multiple ways. Take our namesake, the “life hack.” The terminology “hack” refers to a computer programmer breaking security on a network or system. However, when used in conjunction with the word “life”, it alters the meaning to tips and tricks people can use to improve their lives. If you have trouble finding what you’re searching for, keep in mind that people may search or define what you need in a different way than you do.

• You may search “How to install drivers in Ubunut?”

• When you really mean “Troubleshoot driver problems Ubuntu.”

There really isn’t a good specific example for this one. If you search for something and you can’t find an answer, try asking the same question using different words and see if that helps the results.

18. Find a specific file

An often forgotten feature of Google search is the ability to search for a specific file or file type. This can be infinitely useful if you need a specific PDF or PowerPoint file that you previously viewed or need to use for another project. The syntax is quite simple.

• *Search term here* filetype:pdf

In the above example, you simply replace the search term with whatever you’re searching for. Then use the filetype command and enter the extension of any file type you can think of. This can mostly be useful for scholarly purposes, but business presentations and other assorted presentations can benefit from this kind of search as well.

19. Money and unit conversions

Google search can quickly and accurately convert both measurement units and currency value. There are a variety of uses for this, like checking to see the conversion rate between two currencies. If you happen to be a math student, you can use it to convert from feet to meters or from ounces to liters. Here’s how to do it.

• miles to km – This will convert miles to kilometers. You can put numbers in front to convert a certain number. Like “10 miles to km” will show you how many kilometers are in 10 miles.

• USD to British Pound Sterling – This will convert a US dollar to British pounds. Like the measurements above, you can add numbers to find exact conversions for a certain amount of money.

It’s true that this tip is geared toward math students and international business people. However, you’d be surprised how often these tips are used by regular people.

20. Track your packages

Our last trick is to use Google search to find out where your packages are. You can enter any UPS, USPS, or Fedex tracking number directly into the Google search bar, and it’ll show you the tracking information about your package. This is much easier than going to the specific sites, waiting for them to load, then searching for your packages there. No examples are really needed for this one. Just type your tracking number in and see where your package is.

Google Search wrap-up

Google search is a very powerful search tool. Using the tips outlined above, you can find anything and everything you could ever need on the World Wide Web.

RANKING

How are Search Results Listed?

Are the First Results Always the Best Results?

When you send a query to a search engine do you assume that the first results listed will be the most relevant? Do you persist and look beyond the first few pages of returns?

Market research indicates that 85% of casual search engine users don't go beyond the first page of results. This makes webmasters and marketing experts very interested in placing their sites in the first 10 returns of a search engine. Understanding the mechanics of this relevancy placement will help you evaluate the quality of the results, and may make you more determined to dig beyond the top 10.

Every search engine strives to return relevant web pages that will satisfy your requests.

Each search engine uses a proprietary 'ranking algorithm' that attempts to instantly build a list of highly appropriate responses to your query. Since each search engine applies its own formula to a unique database of information, results and relevancy rankings will always vary from search engine to search engine. (This is one reason serious searchers always consult multiple search engines.)

All search engines use the same basic ingredients to determine relevancy, it's just the mix that varies. The keywords of your query start the process. All ranking algorithms consider how often keywords appear in a document (frequency). They also measure keywords in relation to each other within a document (proximity). Another measure considers the location of keywords in a document. Keywords occurring at the beginning of a page, in the titles of pages, and in the URLs of the pages, are all given more 'weight' as relevancy is determined.

Another important element is the website's link popularity ranking. Many search engines, most notably Google, consider links to a web page as a vote of confidence and popularity. The number of links to a resource then becomes a major factor in determining relevancy. It is assumed that a page that is linked to by other sites has been judged valuable and worthy. The greater the 'link popularity', the higher the potential relevancy of the site. Extra weight is assigned if the pages linking to the resource also have 'link popularity'.

What is web page ranking?

Search engines display their results as an ordered list. The list is 'ranked' with the most relevant websites (as determined by the search engine's ranking algorithm) highest on the first page of returns. There are many factors involved in determining the rank order of search results. It is important for the serious searcher to understand the underlying dynamics of the process.

How do search engines determine the relevancy of a web page?

Each search engine determines the relevance of a page as it relates to a query by using a ranking algorithm. The ranking algorithm is a computerized formula designed to match highly relevant pages with a user's query. The exact nature of each search engine's ranking formula is a closely guarded secret. In general, search engines use a combination of factors that always include keyword frequency and page popularity. If a query is well formed, the results, while imperfect, often satisfy the searcher. (See the IMSA modules on Keywords, Operators, and Queries for more information on how to form effective queries.)

Do all search engines use the same formula when determining ranking?

Each search engine has a unique ranking algorithm that parses its database of web pages to determine relevant responses to your queries. Relevance is determined by weighing both keyword and website popularity factors. The same query done on different search engines will yield different rankings. Each search engine will weight the relevancy of a page according to its own special algorithm. Additionally, each search engine indexes information in a different way. This means that the relevancy rankings of each site will be unique.

How are keywords used to determine ranking?

The keywords of your query start the process. All ranking algorithms consider how often keywords appear in a document (frequency). They also measure keywords in relation to each other within a document (proximity). Another measure considers the location of keywords in a document. Keywords occurring at the

beginning of a page are considered most important.

Additionally, keywords that appear in the titles of pages, and in the URLs of the pages, are given more 'weight' as relevancy is determined.

What is Link Popularity?

Websites that are 'linked to' by other websites are said to have 'link popularity'. This concept is fundamental in the Google Page rank algorithm. Google considers each link to a web page a market driven vote for the website. The more links to a website, the more votes and the higher the Page rank that site achieves with Google.

However just being linked to by a large number of other websites won't guarantee higher placement on Google.

The popularity of the page displaying the link is also given weight. If the page linking to a website is also highly popular, the Page rank of the linked to site improves even more. By contrast, creating links to other pages does not improve a site's ranking. Otherwise, it would be easy for any site to boost rankings by creating links to highly popular sites like .

How does page popularity affect relevancy rankings?

Determining ranking and relevancy by page popularity is based on the concept that quality sites with good information draw more visitors. This is a market driven premise that assumes a site is popular because the information provided is of high quality. If a site has a great many 'visitors' and is relevant to your query, it is placed higher on the relevancy list than less popular sites.

What is click-through popularity?

One measure a search engine might include in its ranking algorithm is how often users actually visit or 'click-through' the ranked results of a query. The more often a site is chosen from the query results list, the higher its 'click-through popularity', and the higher it climbs in the rankings.

Click-through popularity is a factor in the ranking algorithms of Ask Jeeves, Teoma and others.

The time spent at the 'click through' site before returning to the ranked list is also measured. This measure of 'stickiness' can be factored into the ranking algorithm.

Does a site's presence in subject indexes affect its relevancy ranking?

Subject indexes like the Open Directory Project and LookSmart rely on human editors to review websites and categorize worthy sites into subject indexes. Search engine's ranking algorithms use subject index listings as evidence of resource quality. A site that has been reviewed and included in a subject index will be ranked higher than one that has not been listed in a subject index.

Is popularity ranking good for the researcher?

In most cases popularity ranking will improve your search results. Google pioneered this approach and won considerable market share because consumers noticed a significant improvement in the relevancy of returns. Most search engines now use some form of popularity ranking to determine relevancy. When popularity ranking is applied to millions of web pages you get a fairly unbiased measurement of a page's value. Exceptions are when you are researching unpopular opinions or seeking information from newly published resources on the web. A new website might have highly relevant and accurate information, but suffer in the popularity ranking simply because it is knew. Of course as the site ages and awareness of its qualities spreads we can assume the popularity of the site will grow.

How Do Paid Placement and Paid Inclusion Effect Search Result Rankings?

Don't assume that inclusion in the top 10 or 20 reults is based on content merit alone. Be aware that sites ranked in the top 20 returns, while relevant, may have paid to be there. A dedicated researcher will look beyond the first pages and not be biased against results that are 'lower on the list'. Intense competition for the top 20 spots associated with a keyword has created an income opportunity for search engines.

Webmasters can buy their way into the top twenty by paying a placement premium.

Many search engines sell accelerated inclusion or placement. These Search engines include Google, Yahoo, LookSmart, Teoma, Ask Jeeves, Alta Vista, Lycos, Inktomi and FAST. Some search engines such as Google, distinguish paid placement by setting paid sites to one side of the page. Others mix paid sites directly into the rankings, with no way for the user to distinguish, which sites have paid for high placement. Paid Inclusion is another common practice of popular search engines. Since it can take weeks or even months before a search engine includes a web site in its index, some webmasters are willing to pay to be quickly included in a search engine's database. Paid inclusion does not guarantee any precedence in the rankings; it just expedites the process of being indexed by the search engine.

What are Webmaster tricks? Do they affect page ranking?

Search engine ranking algorithms are constantly being revised to improve performance and screen out 'webmaster tricks' that attempt to unfairly skew page ranking. These tricks, sometimes called spamdexing, are attempts to fool search engines. Flooding a home page with keywords or loading the html meta-tag feature with keywords are examples of spamdexing.

Search engines have counter programmed their indexing systems to identify illicit attempts to 'spam' the relevancy rating of a page. In some cases offending websites are banned and removed from the search engine index altogether.

Google no longer considers 'meta-tags' because this feature of HTML that provides descriptive keywords to search engine 'crawlers' is frequently abused.

The usefulness of a search engine depends on the relevance of the result set it gives back. While there may be millions of web pages that include a particular word or phrase, some pages may be more relevant, popular, or authoritative than others. Most search engines employ methods to rank the results to provide the "best" results first.

How a search engine decides which pages are the best matches, and what order the results should be shown in, varies widely from one engine to another. The methods also change over time as Internet usage changes and new techniques evolve.

There are two main types of search engine that have evolved ---

• One is a system of predefined and hierarchically ordered keywords that humans have programmed extensively.

• The other is a system that generates an "inverted index" by analyzing texts it locates. This second form relies much more heavily on the computer itself to do the bulk of the work.

Most Web search engines are commercial ventures supported by advertising revenue and, as a result, some employ the practice of allowing advertisers to pay money to have their listings ranked higher in search results. Those search engines which do not accept money for their search engine results make money by running search related advertisements alongside the regular search engine results. The search engines make money every time someone clicks on one of these advertisements.

A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two items, the first is either 'ranked higher than', 'ranked lower than' or 'ranked equal to' the second. In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of objects. It is not necessarily a total order of objects because two different objects can have the same ranking. The rankings themselves are totally ordered. For example, materials are totally preordered by hardness, while degrees of hardness are totally ordered.

By reducing detailed measures to a sequence of ordinal numbers, rankings make it possible to evaluate complex information according to certain criteria. Thus, for example, an Internet search engine may rank the pages it finds according to an estimation of their relevance, making it possible for the user quickly to select the pages they are likely to want to see.

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