History of Search Engines - Dissertation Example

? History of Search Engines Introduction Search engines are a part of the web and these have turned to be an essential element for the purpose of webinteraction. The search engines not only deal with the information requests but also the search engines in the present time act as a means of finding ways. These search engines assist in guiding people to particular websites or act as supporting tools in the course of browsing. The suppliers of content and the webmasters had started to maximize the efficiency of the sites for the reason of search engines in the middle of 1990. This was the period when the initial search engines had started tagging the premature web. Gradually, the need and the importance of having proper visibility and appropriate position of one’s sites were identified by the site owners. This gave rise to the need and the popularity of the search engines (Vlachynsky, 2010). The search engines are even made use of by the people as functions that facilitate in conducting and performing e-commerce operations. People constantly make fresh and progressively more diverse use of the search engines. As a result, these search engines are continually attempting to enhance the recovery facets related to their services. It needs to be mentioned in this regard that a fresh innovation for the purpose of enhancing web recovery was the process of sponsored search. The process of sponsored search refers to the process where the suppliers of content make payments to the search engines for the reason of traffic leading to their respective websites from the sources of search engines (Jansen & Mullen, 2008). Literature Review The history behind the means of search in the Internet emerged in the period of 1990. This gave birth to ‘Archie’ which was made by a team of students from the McGill University of Montreal. Their creation Archie was a program which involved collecting information and was script-based. This particular program facilitated the download of the records from the directory of the entire files that were supposed to be retrieved from the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites. Archie was considered to be a rejoinder to the principal way of recovering and accumulating files back in those days when Web had no existence. At that point of time, the files used to remain spread on unidentified public FTP servers which were only able to be found when someone declared a particular file’s availability through email and discussion forum or such similar sources. After a time-span of a year a dispersed search as well as recovery system procedure for documents known by the name of Gopher, was made available in the Internet. This was developed by a team of researchers belonging to the University of Minnesota. This release of Gopher was trailed by the emergence of few programs of searching known as Jughead as well as Veronica. These programs were stated to explore those files which were grouped in the directory systems of Gopher and made available a search related to the records and names with the help of a keyword on the numerous servers of Gopher (Gasser, 2006). Accessing the Internet speedily stretched outside its earlier area of research which was of industrial organizations and academic world. This reformation and alteration took place after the World Wide Web (WWW), which was made available publicly from August 1991, achieved vital mass in the year 1993. This was achieved with the help of the emergence of ‘Mosaic’ which was a web browser. ‘Mosaic’ was stated to be the initial program that offered a user a graphical user interface. Corresponding to the emergence of ‘Mosaic’, the earliest search engine of Web came forward. Wandex which was a directory of confined Universal Resource Locator (URL) and was founded on the earliest web crawler known as the World Wide Web Wanderer was developed. This was initially developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the reason of tracking the progress of the web. At the similar time, a range of search engines surfaced, entailing Aliweb. This was the search engine where the webmasters belonging to the contributing sites placed their own respective directory of information for those pages which were preferred to be recorded. This particular search engine kept away from the premature problems related to the web crawler and which even caused damage to its performance (Vlachynsky, 2010; Gasser, 2006). WebCrawler, the search engine has quite easy interface which was browser-based facilitated the users to look for any single word in any of the existing web pages. This search engine gained huge popularity just within few months owing to its easy accessibility and functions. In the year, another search engine called Lycos was also developed which was the result of a research study conducted at Carnegie Mellon University at Pittsburgh. It was stated to be the earliest search engine which employed links to respective web sites so as to ascertain the background as well as significance respectively. Moreover, this search engine not just exhibited the name and position of a particular page to be its forerunner but also offered clips of certain web pages and their additional characteristics for instance similarity of the prefix as well as the propinquity of word. It was stated that the chief point of difference from Lycos was considered o be the information stored in the directory. The directory storage already arrived at documents of 1.5 million by the month of January in the year 1995 and to 60 million by November in the year 1996 which was remarkably more in contrast to the other existing search engines in the initial days of WWW. This is how the search engines happened to emerge (Gasser, 2006). In comparison to the progress related to the Web and the significance of the search engines there exists few documents regarding the current search engines (Brin & Page, 2000). It was also mentioned by them that the different services which even involved the Lycos narrowly protected the specifications of such stored databases. It is required to be mentioned in this context that numerous research studies on recovering systems of information were conducted (Brin & Page, 2000). Web in the present time is considered to be the principal source of obtaining information for numerous people all across the globe (Jansen & Spink, 2006). Owing to the popularity of the search engines, various search engines were started to be developed. The various search engines that were developed made use of or employed varied methods as a result of which diverse results related to the searches were produced. This particular occurrence initiated building up or structuring of the meta-search engines in the period of 1990s like the Savvy Search or MetaCrawler. This particular creation of search engines facilitated in forwarding the inquiries related to the searches to every main engine present in the web at the same point of time and accumulated the obtained search results. One more significant innovation was considered to be the emergence and beginning of the concept of personally tailored searches where the results of the search related inquiries were routinely tailored according to individual profiles or a similar thing. For instance, HotBot, the search engine which was developed in the year 1996 had a size to store more than 10 million pages each day. This particular search engine was stated to employ cookies for the reason of piling up individual search choices. Numerous search engines were developed after that with the similar feature but all of them were either obtained, incorporated or even moved out. However, amongst all these various search engines, Google was considered to be the most well-known search engine. It was released in the year 1998 by two persons named Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The search engines were structured as forms of business with the intention to financially support their services. Various programs were offered known as ‘pay per click programs’ in the year 1996 by Open Text and later on by Goto.com in the year 1998. The name of Goto.com was later altered and was known as Overture in the year 2001. In the year 2003 it was acquired by Yahoo. During the period, Overture was stated to own Alta Vista as well as AlltheWeb at the time it was acquired by Yahoo. In the year 2004, an alteration was observed in the search technology of Microsoft which was initiated by the company itself. This altered version of the search engine was launched by the name of Bing in the year 2009. In the mid of 2009, a deal was struck between Microsoft and yahoo according to which the search engine of Yahoo was stated to be mechanically driven by the technology of Bing (Seymour, Frantsvog & Kumar, 2011). It was found that the use of search engines were increasing and escalating at a rapid pace. The escalation was observed both in terms of the people accessing the web as well as the array of information that was made available. This gradually made the search engines to be a source or way for the companies to promote themselves in the virtual world. At the same time, it was also observed that promoting through web relies crucially on the factor of visibility. Visibility refers to the probability of catching the attention of numerous web users. Therefore, advertisements recognized search engines to be the vital strategic element with regard to web advertisement. It is also considered to be quite essential for a particular company to become visible on the top few names on the list generated by the search engines in an instance when a user seeks for an item for consumption in their respective market. It needs to be mentioned in this regard that the search engines are also tricked by way of falsely influencing the web pages with the purpose of making them visible in the top names on the list. This phenomenon is Search Engine Persuasion (SEP) and is becoming to be a major security problem (Marchiori, 1997). Statement of the Problem With due significance to the information gathered from the above discussion in literature review it can be stated that there exists a problem of security witnessed by search engines in its chronological developments throughout the history. For instance, the study conducted by Marchiori (1997) identified the issue regarding the security related to the search engines existing in the web. According to Marchiori (1997) the persons accessing web and the search engines are increasing at a rapid rate. The sudden increases in the numbers and the Internet hosts have given rise to the issue of handling such mammoth information. There is excess of information obtainable on the web and are accessible through the search engines. The people availing the web for the reason of existing in this array of information is required to completely depend on the available search engines as well as depositories. As a result, the depositories have been observed to rely on the search engines for the reason of keeping their respective records updated. Therefore, the vital element associated with the management of information is offered by the search engines (Marchiori, 1997). This implies that the search engines are required to maintain a massive amount of information. Search engines gradually started to become a popular field of advertising for the companies through their websites. Companies started working towards listing their websites in the ace positions of the search engines for the purpose of promotion. This phenomenon has been augmenting and along with it the problems associated with the search engines were observed to be increasing as well. The web design companies were asked not just to develop superior websites but also were asked to provide those websites with high positions in the search engines. Most of the companies went through the proper and the official way of promoting themselves in the web through the search engines. But on the other hand, there were quite few companies that involved inappropriate means towards promoting with the application of Search Engine Persuasion (SEP). It has been referred as the method of tricking the assessment systems practiced by the search engines. In other words, it can be mentioned that the search engines are tricked by way of falsely influencing the web pages so as to take them to a higher position in the search engines (Marchiori, 1997). This process of tricking is becoming quite prevalent and is posing to be a grave problem. It makes the people responsible for the maintenance of the search engines incur heavy losses by wrongfully cutting down on the advertisement revenues. The loss in incurred as a result of reluctantly offering advertisements or promotion to companies engaging this process for free. This process of tricking or SEP also makes browsing the web tremendously and increasingly complicated for the users as the actions related to the search engines get seriously influenced because of the tricking. This process of fooling or tricking makes the estimation systems of the search engines go in a wrong direction (Marchiori, 1997). Research Goals Considering the general and specific problem being identified in the present research, the main aim of the proposal will be set. It needs to be mentioned in this context that the research objectives requires to be closely related to the problem identified in the research study. It will be quite practical and sensible to divide the objectives into smaller and rationally interrelated parts so as to reach the particular objectives. The chief objective of this study is to identify the developments in the search engines as major providers of information. The study will also tend to identify the security issues faced by the search engines in providing information. The study will try to identify the various facets related to the security of the functions of the search engines as well as the security of the information. It is well understood in this regard that if the facets of the problems are identified then it would prove helpful for the search engines to work towards finding solution to such problems. The objectives of the research study have been sub-divided into few fractions for reaching at particular objectives below: 1. The significance of search engines to be an effective source of promotion for companies 2. The security issues related to the search engines The research question is considered to be the primary statement that is made to highlight the overall aim of the research study. The research question to be considered in this study will be, “What is the role of search engines in providing information”. The chief purpose of this section is to evidently highlight the purpose that this study will try to analyze the opportunities gained and the challenges faced by the search engines. Research Methodology Research Approach Research approach refers to the means or ways of research taken on by the researcher in the study. There are basically two categories of research approaches and they are the qualitative along with the quantitative approach. This study will be based on a qualitative approach as the overall aim and the subject of the study would involve quite some broad aspects which are quite challenging to be quantified. For instance, the study will entail the ascertainment of the acceptance and usefulness of the search engines as a source of information and advertisement. Therefore, it is evident that these aspects are descriptive in nature and would involve extensive detailing which is possible through the qualitative research approach. Thus, it is clear that qualitative approach will be best suited for this study owing to the descriptive nature of it which would make it difficult to be quantified (Georgia State University, 2003). Data Collection & Analysis The information or data will be collected from secondary sources such as library materials. The sources will include journals, books, reports, articles and magazines. This will be observed to be quite suitable for the research study owing to the easy accessibility and the broad mixture of sources which will assist in making the research more precise and correct. Data collection will enhance the quality of the study and therefore, it is important that the information is gathered from the right sources. The legitimacy of the sources considered in this study will also be considered as a reason behind selecting this process. The way of evaluating the information in this research study will be with the help of qualitative method. Qualitative method will be selected for the study as the data collected will consist of a wide range of information which will be to certain extent impossible to be quantified. Therefore, this approach of evaluating the data will justify the research study to be reliable. Conclusion From the above discussion, the history of the search engines can be evidently traced. It can be inferred from the history that various search engines were released owing to their importance and popularity. Constant innovations were made so as to enhance the functions of the search engines. The amount of people browsing the web has been increasing with every passing day and so is the requirement of search engines. These not only aid in narrowing down one’s search but is also being used a source of promotion by the companies. Therefore, the research will help to provide a pertinent reflection on this valuable factor in the global Internet platform. References Brin, S., & Page, L. (2000). The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual web search engine. Retrieved from http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf Gasser, U. (2006). Regulating search engines: taking stock and looking ahead. Retrieved from http://www.yjolt.org/files/gasser-8-YJOLT-201.pdf Georgia State University. (2003). Quantitative, positivist research methods in information systems. Retrieved from http://dstraub.cis.gsu.edu:88/quant/3genresearch.asp Jansen, B. J. & Spink, A. (2006). How are we searching the World Wide Web?: a comparison of nine search engine transaction logs. Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/4945/1/4945_1.pdf Jansen, B. J. & Mullen, T. (2008). Sponsored search: an overview of the concept, history and technology. Retrieved from http://tmullen.ist.psu.edu/pubs/overview_sponsored_search.pdf Marchiori, M. (1997). Security of World Wide Web search engines. Retrieved from http://www.w3.org/People/Massimo/papers/encress97.pdf Seymour, T., Frantsvog, D., & Kumar, S. (2011). History of Search Engines. International Journal of Management & Information Systems, 15(4), pp. 47-58. Vlachynsky, M. (2010). Principles and history of the web search engines. Retrieved from http://www.econoir.sk/web/stuff/Principles-History-Web-Search-Engines.pdf Read More