Search Engines

1
Search Engines

• Vynarack Xaykao
• INF 385F WIRED
• Dr. Turnbull
• September 30, 2004

2
Outline

• Googles origins
• Marketing your site to search engines
• Meta Search Engines (MSEs)
• Future of web searching

3
Googles Origins

• Sergey Brin Lawrence Page (Stanford U.)
• Dark arts advertiser-driven search engines
• Up to academics to make good engines

4
Google focused on basic elements of IR

• Content scalability (though perfect recall is
  impossible)
• Relevance PageRank
• Information need
• Similar pages
• Stemming (bowl, bowling, bowler)

5
PageRank Factors

• Number of links pointing to a site
• PageRanks of referring pages

Can you think of a disadvantage of using PageRank
to order results?
6
Google Ranking

• Classify words in hit list by type
• Relative font size
• HTML tags
• Position
• IR score count-weights type-weights
• Final rank IR score PageRank

7
Marketing your site to search engines

• search engine optimization use keywords
• directory submission link development
• pay-for-placement campaigns top position
  guaranteed (Overture)
• trusted feed and paid inclusion programs
  guaranteed frequent indexing, top placement not
  guaranteed

8
Meta Search Engines

• Search several engines simultaneously
• Pros
• Saves the searcher time
• Relevant results
• Cons
• Engines accept different syntax
• Searches can be slow and time out

9
Types of Meta Search Engines

• Real MSEs combine results from different engines
  (Vivisimo)
• Pseudo MSEs type I groups the results by search
  engine (My Net Crawler)
• Pseudo MSEs type II opens a window for each
  search engine (Multi-Search-Engine.com)
• Search Utilities software that searches engines
  (Copernic)

10
Future of Web Searching

• Search engines give people starting points
• Hard part is using sites themselves
• Card Pirollis information foraging theory
• Maximum benefit for minimum effort
• Information has a scent
• Dont want user to resort to the site search

11
Next Generation Web Searching

• We would like a train system that magically lays
  down new track to suggest useful directions to go
  based on where we have been so far and what we
  are trying to do. (Hearst, 2002, p. 3)
• How?

12
Metadata

• Types of Metadata
• Creation
• Descriptive
• Administrative
• Good for searching collections of similar items
  (recipes)
• Searching metadata yields higher relevance

13
Faceted classification

• S. R. Ranganathans Colon Classification (1933)
• Example design of wooden furniture in 18th
  century America
• personality furniture
• matter wood
• energy design
• space America
• time 18th century

14
Next Generation Web Searching

• Figure out peoples tasks
• Ideal site incorporates
• metadata using facets for browsing
• search tool for refining

15
Additional References

• Page, L., Brin, S., Motwani, R., Winograd, T.
  (1999). The PageRank citation ranking Bringing
  order to the Web. Retrieved September 29, 2004,
  from http//dbpubs.stanford.edu8090/aux/index-en.
  html
•  
• Pirolli, P. and Card, S. K. (1995). Information
  foraging in information access environments.ACM
  Conference on Human Factors in Software (CHI
  '95), Denver, Colorado 5158.
•  
• Steckel, M. (2002, October 7). Ranganathan for
  IAs. Boxes and Arrows. Retrieved September 26,
  2004, from http//www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/
  ranganathan_for_ias.php