Web Searching

World Wide Web (WWW)

• The web provided a multimedia interface for resouces available on the internet.
• It enable the user to move smoothly through the internet, moving from one document to another.
• Is a collection of computers containing accessed with special software that enable users to view a text, graphic, video and photos. All these can be linked to other documents on the web.

Web Page

• An electric document on the web.
• Created in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language).
• Hyperlink are the connections to other related sites and documents.

Web Browser

• Used for exploring the internet and is launched from the computer dekstop or laptop by clicking on it.
• Have many features that can make exploring the Internet quicker, easier and safer.
• Don't have to type in the full Internet adress. Forget http:// if its followed by a www. In most case won't even need to type in the www prefix.

Web Sites

• A collection of other web pages that can be accessed electronically.
• Starting point called homepage.
• The action of navigating from one site to another is called surfing.

Each web pages and website has adress called Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) or adress of web resources.
e.g http (hypertext transfer protocol)://www.netscape.com (domain)




Search Engine

• were created to help people find what they were looking for in more efficient way.
• Allows user to submit a query that consist of word/phrase.
• There are 2 different kinds of search engine.

Regular search engine. The most popular are:

• Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com)
• Google (http://www.google.com.my/)
• AltaVista (http://altavista.digital.com)
• Hotbot (http://www.hotbot.com)
• Lycos (http://www.lycos.com/)
• Excite (http://www.excite.com)
• InfoSeek (http://www.infoseek.com)
• Magellan (http://www.mckinley.com)

Meta-search engines (these are programmes that use more than one other search engine at the same time to locate things).:

• DogPile (http://www.dogpile.com)
• WebCrawler (http://www.webcrawler.com/)
• Meta crawler (http://www.metacrawler.com/)
• All TheWeb (http://www.alltheweb.com/)
• AOL search (http://search.aol.com/aolcom/webhome)
• Mamma.com (http://mamma.com)
• Ask Jeeves (http://www.askjeeves.com)

Both type of search engines can be used in 2 basic ways (Roblyer, 2001):

• Subject index searches. The search engine site provides a list of topics you can click on.
• Keywords. Type in combinations of words you think could be found in the URLs sites or documents you want.

How does a search engine work?
A search engine operates in the following order:

1. Web crawling
2. Indexing
3. Searching