Did You Know?
The major search engines work together, with varied relationships, to feed and take data from each other to provide their results. With the various algorithms, they cater to different search audiences.
How Search Engines Work
Search Engines vs Directories
Search directories such as Yahoo and the Open Directory (DMOZ), allow a search or browse by category. In addition, human editors construct search directories. These editors have to review submissions and determine what category and description each web site within their domain will have. Search directories can be paid for, or in the case of the Open Directory, be free and staffed by volunteers. Although not referred to as much as search engines, they play a valuable qualitative role in the search engine universe and are usually considered search engines.
Search engines use spiders or crawlers to index websites. They typically use software programs, also known as 'bots' and 'crawlers', to continually scan and index web content. These spiders travel website by website, indexing all of the content and information they can along their path. As you can imagine, search engines can play a great quantitative role in search results.
How Search Engines Work (Together)
Although search engines and directories are similar in purpose, they are quite different in execution, and they both need to addressed. In fact, most of the major search engines and search directories, work together to provide search results. The search engine universe , as it is called, pass information among search engines and directories to try to ensure the best search results for their particular algorithm.
Until recently, Yahoo, provided search results to MSN. MSN now has its own search engine, which provides very good results, which it shares with the Microsoft network. Google shares its results with AOL and Netscape so their results will be similar. Overture, which is a pay per click network is owned by Yahoo, is usually referred to as being part of the Yahoo network. Some of the other major search engines (and directories) are: AskJeeves, Teoma, iWon, LookSmart, AltaVista, Inktomi, alltheweb, FAST, Lycos, Hotbot, and DMOZ. It is very common to refer to search engines and directories both as search engines.
Search Engine Links
