Google and beyond:
information retrieval on the World Wide Web
The invention of the
World Wide Web has brought new challenges, but also many great improvements for
information retrieval. The growth of available information has made it impossible
for humans to maintain and catalog all of the vast number of resources out
there. The limitation of controlled vocabularies and human indexing does not
exist with search engines. They are also available 24/7 online so we do not
deal with the limitation of a library’s open hours either.
Search engines function
by having a software agent, or computer program, scan and analyze web pages to
index them. The software agents do this continually to add more and more pages
to the search engine’s index. When someone submits a search query in the search
engine, the engine uses these indexes to quickly retrieve web pages that fit
what the user is searching for. Google is known for their gigantic index as
well as what they call “PageRank”, which is a algorithm system that Google
founders have developed to weed out unimportant web pages that would clog up a
user’s search with “bad” sources at the top of their list. For example, if you
Google “Facebook”, Facebook.com would be the first result with the most relevant
and popular pages just below it. As you went through page after page and page
of results for Facebook, because there would be a lot, you would come across
pages that may just mention “Facebook” on it, but is not a site you would ever
be looking for like a blog or a random organization’s website.
A problem with search
engines and how they accumulate keywords or tags to be used when finding re
sults
is that website creators can insert metatags that are irrelevant to their site
just to be included on more search results and bring traffic to their page. A
website for a dog breeder in Colorado should not have the metatag “Chicago Cubs”
just because they want to gain attention from the world series hype. A breast
cancer awareness site should not use the tag “election 2016” to put themselves
on search engine results list just because that is a popular search term right
now. Search engines are far more beneficial than harmful though and they will
only get better from here. They make finding information faster and easier than
ever and are here to stay.
sults
is that website creators can insert metatags that are irrelevant to their site
just to be included on more search results and bring traffic to their page. A
website for a dog breeder in Colorado should not have the metatag “Chicago Cubs”
just because they want to gain attention from the world series hype. A breast
cancer awareness site should not use the tag “election 2016” to put themselves
on search engine results list just because that is a popular search term right
now. Search engines are far more beneficial than harmful though and they will
only get better from here. They make finding information faster and easier than
ever and are here to stay.
Reference
Northedge, R. (2007). Google and beyond: Information retrieval on the World
Wide Web. The
Indexer
25:192-195.
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