Search Engines Explained
The animated TECHTip Tutorial is available here.
Each Search Engine searches data from Web sites and other online services but each has their own proprietary (secret) algorithms (rule-of-thumb or step-by-step problem-solving procedure/practices).
Users log in (connect or create a session) to a mainframe. Since there was no GUI [Graphical User Interface] (such as the “green screen”) of an IBM 3270 “dumb” terminal, computer programmers would create programs to retrieve these lists of data files and place them in a Menu. Programs such as Archie, Veronica, WAIS [Wide Area Information Server] and Gopher (University mascot) not just “go-fer” (fetch/retrieve) were the first search engines. The term “Spider” comes from the concept of crawling (Crawler) across other locations. Bot comes from robot an automated process. That is, the robot crosses other networks and retrieves data. Since large “dumb terminals” were replaced with multi-application PCs running DOS programs, new types of search engines emerged. DOS operating systems have been largely replaced with GUI OSes such as Apple, Microsoft, and Linux. Web browsers and new multi-media applications accelerated the growth and need for search engines.
Each Search Engine searches data from Web sites and other online services but each has their own proprietary (secret) algorithms (rule-of-thumb or step-by-step problem-solving procedure/practices). There are two primary search algorithms; Recursive “Running Backward” – searching up from the root, trunk, branch to the lead and Iterative Searching “Running Blind” or continually modifying the search until query found as to the way data is retrieved, organized, rated/ranked and other features/factors.
SEO [Search Engine Optimization] is performed by different search engines often very differently. Since Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Lycos, and the hundreds of other Search Engines are all in competition with one another, each company attempts (though generally poorly) to execute/process your search. In order to improve rating/ranking of your Web site and accessibility by Search Engines there is universal agreement that the Web site should be designed for easy access by search engine spiders to META TAGS. When users type in the URL [Uniform Resource Locator], the browser looks for a file(s) called index.html. This file is the main Web directory. Using an HTML software editor, the following is one type of coding/format used by Spiders to “login and retrieve” information about your Web site.
<head>
<title>Page title here</title> UP TO 60 CHARACTERS - Recommended Limit
<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Put your description here .."> UP TO 100-150 CHARACTERS - Recommended Limit
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="Put your keywords here .."> UP TO 864 CHARACTERS - Recommended Limit
</head>
NOTE: This is not the only information that is in the index.html file, but it is the information most retrieved by Search Engine Spiders.
RIGHT CLICK – By right clicking on your mouse on any Web page, you can call up the source HTML code. Before building your own index.html, go see how others have written the code. Since there are no absolute rules, this can certainly give you some ideas.
Spiders, crawlers and bots search and retrieve META tags from Web sites. SEO is based on retrieving data that is made available to the public directories (folders). Password protected, internally accessible data is not available to the spiders.
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[tags]tutorial,techtionary,techtip,search engine,gopher[/tags]
