Evaluating Search Engines - Essay Example

Evaluating Search Engines: The Good, the Better and the Best Man is gradually transferring his power to find and locate things to technology. In today’s day and age of computers and the internet, search engines play the most important role in helping an individual locate absolutely anything, anywhere in the world. There is a vast amount of information, possibly even unimaginable, on the World Wide Web consortium. For finding images, texts and graphs, and almost any kind of information, all a person has to do is type in a few keywords on these engines and they help to transport the person to the best possible web documents that match his keywords. However, with the development of so many search engines all over the world, the question still remains, which one is the best, and what is it that makes it so? This paper thus looks into an overall evaluation of search engines. A search engine is an instrument that helps a person to find anything that he wants, just by typing in a few keywords in the search box. It helps to then locate those keywords and matches it with all the possible documents that have been uploaded on the World Wide Web servers for the purpose of returning them to the user. Many search engines also have databases from which they return information back to the user. In today’s day and age, there are a number of companies gunning towards building such search engines because it has also formed a very lucrative business in the past decade alone. Most people make use of search engines; now more so especially because of this facility being available to them on their phones as well. Information on the go has become the most popular form of obtaining knowledge about anything. If one takes a survey of how most people learn new things or where they look for information, they will reply with “Google”, or “Yahoo”. These two search engines are two of the most popular and powerful engines in the world, on the internet. They have earned a brand status for themselves with time and in turn generated a large amount of revenue for their respective companies as well. (Sherman, Chris) Due to the importance and increase in usage of these search engines, a number of companies and firms have also opened up businesses in terms of content writing and copy writing articles on the basis of the keywords that are typed into these search engines. However, what is it that determines the basis for making a search engine one of the best? What is it that sets some engines apart from others and makes them stand out in a manner that people begin using the names as everyday verbs? Some of the more obvious reasons for a search engine being able to reach its peak when it comes to people popularity are a simple and concise look and design coupled with ease of use. A search engine is more of a graphical user interface where the user is supposed to input his queries and he is returned answers within a matter of milliseconds. Thus, any search engine that wants to become big and known must have a very clean look and an easily usable search box where people can type in whatever they want. Next, a search engine should also be able to provide information to people at the drop of a hat. Most search engines do not work because they make people wait. In today’s era of extra fast movement, people are becoming increasingly impatient, especially more so when it comes to finding out information and working. Nobody wants to wait or spend more time trying to research rather than actually researching; thus a good search engine should be able to transmit information from all over the world within a matter of milliseconds. Anything that takes longer will not interest people or hold their attention for very long. It will deter them from ever using that website again and put them off. A search engine should also be compatible with all kinds of documents on the World Wide Web. It should be able to give people information in almost all kinds of formats so that people can access them easily. It should be able to encrypt information and prevent users from clicking on websites that might lead to their computers getting affected by viruses. A good filter system should thus be installed in every good search engine so that even if people do not take precautionary measures, the engine does that for them. Most search engines have also over the years developed a quality of being able to provide information from different search engines all over the internet. They are known as meta search engines, like search.com and mamma.com. They further help to broaden the search that a person is able to conduct by combining information provided on different search engines and thus helping the user avoid taking up more time to carry out the process. Many search engines also help to narrow down the results that they provide because most of the times the keywords match with documents that are irrelevant to the user and in this case the user gets very tired trying to siphon through all the information in order to get what he wants. Some engines also help the user to see quick screen shots of all the information that is contained within those websites instead of making the user go through a number of websites before he can finally decide what information he needs. These provide to be very beneficial for the user because looking at thumbnails or screen shots helps to save on a lot of time. Google has also developed “Google Cheat Sheets” which helps the user to cut down on a lot of his personal time by providing a lot of search shortcuts. Many engines help the user to put in keywords as well as certain other terms they are searching for, for example, whether they are looking for books in print, journals, publications, news articles, etc. The user may also use quotes for his keywords which helps some engines to narrow down searches and help to look for specific documents all over the web. Looking for information on the internet is as good as looking for a needle in a haystack, and that is why most users prefer search engines that can narrow down searches for them and not provide a vast array of information that is not required. There are a number of search engines on the internet that also help to provide direct answers for users and most of the times these are more helpful than looking out for bits of information and trying to piece out the answers by one’s self. Engines like Answers.com help to give direct answers to the most popularly asked questions. Users may also submit their queries and receive replies for the same promptly. Finally, it goes without saying that any good search engine should be able to retrieve information and present it to the user, from almost any corner of the world. It should be able to pick up on the keywords the user types, remove any kind of redundancy and deliver a neat and clear presentation to the user. If it fails to do so, then the user will not feel tempted to return to that search engine in order to carry out his search work. Such tactics help to impress the user and let him know that he may trust the particular website. Only if the user is able to attain all the information he needs, will he be able to come back to the search engine and recommend it to others. According to statistics, the best three search engines in the world are Google, followed by Yahoo! and then Bing. 91% of internet users have made Google their homepage and use it to find out information. Over the years, Google has been able to create such a reputation for itself because of the kind of easy performance that it has been able to deliver to the world. Its search engine is the fastest in the world, providing information, images, and all kinds of documents that no other search engine has been able to. (Top Ten Search Engines) Google has tweaked its search engines to transport people instantly to any corner of the electronic world that they want while keeping their needs in mind. They began the bookmark system where people can store their favourite pages, as well as their own web browser, Chrome. The search engine keeps the needs and interests of every individual as it saves personal preferences on to different computers. It syncs with a person’s e-mail and helps them to discover things that they need according to their demands. It also helps people to rank pages according to their wishes. All this has helped to create a very user friendly environment amidst which a person soon forgets that he is after all using a computer. Google is very friendly and has helped people all over the world to lessen the gap in obtaining information. Other search engines like Yahoo!, Bing, Ask and AOL are some of the others that people use and are not so far behind. However, in order to gain stardom like Google these search engines needs to look more into the needs of the user and try and transmit information on a more personal level, not making the user feel like he is using an external device to extract information. (Craik, Donald) Therefore, a good search engine is that which incorporates all the aspects discussed above, and most importantly consists of a user friendly interface easy for the user to type in his keywords from a computer as well as a smart phone. Providing extra services like maps and a GPS system, like Google has, has only enabled it to become more amiable with the users and this is what attracts them towards it. In order to build credit worthiness for itself, a search engine that consists of all this and some other innovative entrepreneurial ideas will be able to combat the kind of attention Google has been receiving. In its true sense, Google is dominating the search engine economy. References Craik, Donald, W. Evaluation of Internet and Internet Search Engines. University of Manitoba Libraries. Online. Retrieved from http://www.umanitoba.ca/libraries/engineering/evaluate.shtml Top Ten Search Engines. SEO Consultants Directory. Online. Retrieved from http://www.seoconsultants.com/search-engines/ Sherman, Chris. (2003) Search Engine Birthdays. Online, Retrieved from http://searchenginewatch.com/3071951 Read More