Future of Search Engine Technology
Future Search Software Programs for the World Wide Web
Oct 3, 2009
Search engines may be described as software programs that search the world wide websites for specified keywords and return a list of the documents where the optimum keywords are found. The search engines send out a ‘spider’ to retrieve as many relevant documents as possible.
There is a program called indexer that scans these documents and creates an index related to the words contained in each document. This ensures that only meaningful results are returned for each key word search. The search engine process can be succinctly stated as:
- The visitor enters into a search engine subject line a query pertinent to what he or she is looking for.
- The search engine software thereafter scans through with lightning speed probably several millions of pages in its database to find documents in response to the query.
- Search engines do the search job in a series of ways - crawling, indexing, processing, assessing relevancy, and retrieving – to deliver the best possible results.
- The search engine's results are ranked and displayed in order of relevancy.
The ultimate aim of all search engines is to provide quality search results efficiently and speedily.
Website Visitors’ Grouse
Presently, many website visitors complain that conducting a search on any of the major search engines to get the right results calls for luck. Most visitors enter the query and wait for the best results. Several computer professionals agree that after entering the desired search, one often keeps the fingers crossed for the expected information to come.
The fact is the search engines are trying to enhance their search results- so that they can better recognize the intentions of the searcher to throw more appropriate and less disappointing results.
It must be stated, in all fairness, that even persons knowledgeable about the Web are unaware how to write good query. Equally true is the fact that search engines have certain weaknesses. They are increasingly charging corporate users for their services, they manipulate results in favor of advertisers, and they quite often retrieve loads of irrelevant information.
Areas for Improvements in Search Engine Technology
The function of a search is complex but there is ample scope for future improvement. The immediately identifiable areas for increasing search efficiency include query caching, smart disk allocation, creation of sub-indices and updates.
There is a compelling necessity to evolve smart algorithms to determine the old web pages that require re-crawling and new pages that should be crawled. Scanning images is one of the major upgrades that should soon be possible with search engines.
There is also scope for better organizing link structure and link text. Many feel PageRank can be personalized by increasing the weight of a user's home page or bookmarks. Another useful area for improvement might be using proxy caches to build search databases.
The single pointed goal of search engines should be to provide accurate search results and precise information over a rapidly growing World Wide Web. Search engines must bestow attention to fine-tune techniques including page rank, anchor text, and proximity information. Search engines must rebuild the architecture for scanning web pages, indexing and performing exhaustive searches.
Computer professionals also aver that search engines should track links and dynamic content with greater ease. This may call for designing and putting in place an ultra premium spider monitoring software.
Future of Search Engine Technology
While many smaller search engines are surfacing, the onus of taking search engine technology to the next level lies with major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Microsoft.
Information technologists believe that the search results we receive in the not too distant future would make the present search engine technology appear primitive and cumbersome. However, in order to achieve this new search technology, consumers must be forthcoming and shed apprehensions about protection of their privacy.
Picture a scenario where Google is able to keep track and monitor the web sites a consumer views and maintains a log of all of the search queries. This type of personalized information could greatly improve the relevancy of the results displayed by the search engines to the said consumer. It is worth giving up a part of one’s privacy, if it could result in search engines throwing out more relevant results saving time.
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