Spring Break
Search engines, data algorithms improve
Technophile
Kevin Lynch
Issue date: 10/15/04 Section: Sci-Tech
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Tn the beginning, there was the ARPANET. And then there was the Internet. And the Data poured upon the servers like mana from heaven. And then Al Gore said, "Let there be blinking lights," and there were blinking lights. Alright, so maybe the creation of the Internet wasn't as fantastic as that, and no, Al Gore did not create the Internet, contrary to popular belief. However, if he did, maybe the Internet would be much easier to navigate, with pertinent information finding you for a change, and not the other way around. That probably will never happen, with or without Al Gore and his algorithms, so the problem still remains. How do you search through all of the information found on the Internet, relevant or otherwise, accurately and efficiently?
The answer to that is now Google. Or is it? Back in the stone ages of computing, before the Internet as we know it today existed, the problem was already noticed. In 1990, the primary method of file storage and retrieval was through the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). At the time, the only way to tell what information was stored on which server was by word-of-mouth methods such as an e-mail or a message board posting. Archie, however, was the first tool to solve this problem, albeit in a very rudimentary fashion by today's standards. Archie gathered data by connecting to various anonymous FTP sites and archived the names of stored files, archiving them in a publicly accessible database. Archie was a revolutionary system which can be considered the forerunner of modern search engines.
As newer, improved technology became available, the searching methods became even more efficient. Several search systems have come and gone, introducing even better search algorithms and methods. Some of them have been wildly successful, while others have, for one reason or another, faded away. In the early nineties, various spider based search engines were created to roam webpages to look for links between pages, such as HotBot, Excite and WebCrawler. Others took a different approach, such as Yahoo!, to tame the Internet. Not a true search engine per se, Yahoo! is a searchable directory, allowing for a much more natural approach to data mining. However, at the time, search engines would never produce the same results. What would yield poor results on one search engine could yield a gold mine on another. Eventually, MetaCrawler was created to take and reformat the results of all of the other major search engines, angering the other search engines for lost users, and pleasing users with better results.
The answer to that is now Google. Or is it? Back in the stone ages of computing, before the Internet as we know it today existed, the problem was already noticed. In 1990, the primary method of file storage and retrieval was through the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). At the time, the only way to tell what information was stored on which server was by word-of-mouth methods such as an e-mail or a message board posting. Archie, however, was the first tool to solve this problem, albeit in a very rudimentary fashion by today's standards. Archie gathered data by connecting to various anonymous FTP sites and archived the names of stored files, archiving them in a publicly accessible database. Archie was a revolutionary system which can be considered the forerunner of modern search engines.
As newer, improved technology became available, the searching methods became even more efficient. Several search systems have come and gone, introducing even better search algorithms and methods. Some of them have been wildly successful, while others have, for one reason or another, faded away. In the early nineties, various spider based search engines were created to roam webpages to look for links between pages, such as HotBot, Excite and WebCrawler. Others took a different approach, such as Yahoo!, to tame the Internet. Not a true search engine per se, Yahoo! is a searchable directory, allowing for a much more natural approach to data mining. However, at the time, search engines would never produce the same results. What would yield poor results on one search engine could yield a gold mine on another. Eventually, MetaCrawler was created to take and reformat the results of all of the other major search engines, angering the other search engines for lost users, and pleasing users with better results.
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