6.2 Demonstrate knowledge of search logic, search engines and features of the Internet

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Truncation and wildcards
3. Grammar of the Internet
4. Search engine operation
   1. Search terms
   2. How ranking works
5. Ownership of the web
6. Dark internet and the invisible web

Search engine operation

There are essentially three stages involved in search engine operation.

1. Before you come to type in the search terms, there has to have been an enormous gathering of data about websites carried out by the search engine company.
2. The search engine uses your search terms to select candidate sites for the results.
3. The search engine returns the results ranked in some order.

Let's look at how each of these stages works.

The Internet is continually being scanned by software set up by the search engine company. This software called a spider or web bot looks for websites and key words to associate with them. The key words can either be metadata (descriptive keywords supplied by the site designer) or words in the text. The result is an enormous data bank of website addresses and their corresponding key words.

Let's look now at Search terms ...