Search+Engines

Overview
Search engines allow people to search for anything on the internet. The results from this search are known as “hits,” which can be anything from websites to pictures. Search engines are usually very easy to use. Just type what you are looking for into the search box, and in seconds you will have a ton of different web pages and internet sites that can give information on almost any topic.

The first site used to search the internet was called Archie. This name comes from “archive.” Students from McGill University created this in 1990. It stored public files that could be searched through. However, it was not at all like the type of search engine we see today. In 1991, Veronica and Jughead were created. These, once again, searched for files on the internet, but were not used in the same way search engines are used. It wasn’t until 1993 that the first search engine was introduced. This was the W3 Catalog. Then, in 1994, the search engine WebCrawler came out. This was a unique search engine because it allowed people to search through entire documents for words. Since then many new search engines have emerged. For more information on past internet search engines, click here.

There are three steps for search engines. First is web crawling. This involves the search engine searching the World Wide Web for web pages. The second step is indexing. Indexing is when the search engine goes through the web pages to find answers to the topic searched. The final step is searching. Searching is what the user does when they write their “search query.” A search query is the information that the user is looking for. All of these steps allow users to easily find what they are looking for online. An image of this process can be seen here.

Currently, the top five search engines are Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Ask, and AOL Search. All of these sites are easy to use, and give plenty of good information fast.

**History**
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**Opinion**
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**Future Trends?**
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