Home
>
Web Development
>
The Evolution Of Search

The Evolution Of Search

There have been many significant changes to the face of search over the last several years with engines becoming more intelligent than ever before. Today's users expect mainly fast, easy, relevant and satisfactory search results. In response to this search engines have responded by giving users more control over search results than ever through the emergence of alternative search engines.

One instance of these so-called alternative search engines goes by the name of Nutch (http://www.nutch.org/). Nutch is a two-year-old open source project, which has been hosted previously at Soundforge and backed by a non-profit organization. Since then it has been determined that the Apache license is the most appropriate, with Nutch no longer requiring the overhead of an independent non-profit organization. The board of directors and the developers both were in favor of the move to the Apache Foundation.

Nutch builds on Lucene technology, which was developed under the watchful eye of Doug Cutting, the primary developer for both of these open source projects. Doug has been working in the field for almost two decades and has spent three years at Apple, four years at Excite as well as 5 years at Xerox PARC, so it is safe to say that Doug definitely knows his stuff. Lucene is suitable for nearly any application that requires full-text search, especially cross-platform. It is a full-featured, high-performance, text search engine library, coded entirely in Java to implement web search. Nutch is an application; you can download it and run it. It adds a crawler and other web-specific stuff to Lucene as well as it's very own search algorithm and a link analysis module. Nutch aims to search the entire web like Google or Yahoo! but has a few tricks up its sleeve thanks to the beauty of open source licensing.

I recently had the privilege to interview Mel Strocen, the CEO of Jayde Online, Inc. (http://www.exactseek.com/), one of the Web's major online publication and search companies. Mel had some very exciting news to report on how Jayde is planning to utilize the Nutch application.

Jayde has been developing a customized version of Nutch for the last eight months and is planning to launch a search engine based on the Nutch technology within the next few weeks. The initial beta version will consist of a network of dedicated servers with an index of between 20 and 30 million website listings.

The real potential of this new search engine, and others using the Nutch technology, lies in the fact that it is open source and uses a "Plug-In Architecture". What this means is that the engine will be perpetually evolving and constantly improving to better facilitate the needs of searchers. One terrific example that shows us just how beneficial this type of open source plug-in technology can be is the FireFox web browser (http://www.firefox.com/).

FireFox, in its short existence has eaten up a significant portion of the once all mighty Internet Explorer's market share. The popularity of this browser is due to the fact that it is constantly making itself smarter. You can now find a plug-in for virtually anything that you require , ranging from web developer, downloading, and search tools to privacy, security, website integration and humorous plug-ins. You name it, there is an extension for it. The extension library consists of nearly six hundred different plug-ins and is growing daily thanks to the help of contributors everywhere.

Now just imagine implementing this type of plug-in technology to a search engine, with one type of plug-in for say searching MP3s and another plug-in for downloading PDFs. The possibilities of this new open source search technology are infinite. Now the term "open-source search engine" may make a lot of people's minds wander towards the idea of Black Hat search engine optimization. The primary developer of Nutch, Doug Cutting, feels that the closed-source advantage is not nearly as much of a factor as one might imagine it to be. The fact that the search engine is open-source allows sp@mmers to be detected far faster than that of closed-source search engines latest sp@m detecting algorithms. Either way, you know that the sp@mmers will eventually figure out how it works, the only difference is how quickly. So the top anti-sp@m techniques, closed or open source, are those that continue to function even when their mechanism is known.

Another type of alternative search engine technology has just recently been released to beta version is "Relevancy Rank" from the Claria Corporation (http://www.claria.com/relevancyrank/about/), the minds behind Gator. I had the pleasure to conduct an interview with the Vice President and Executive Chief of Marketing, Scott Eagle. He had some very interesting things to say about the launch of this new product and what exactly the benefit of Relevancy Rank has to the user. This unique search technology takes the results from the top search engines and applies its very own algorithms to output to the user the most relevant results.

Relevancy Rank is a combination of personalization, localization, time spent at any one site, click through rates as well as conversions. These are all taken into account to provide the most relevant results. "For an example, if you happened to be a zoologist who loved to search for different animals and information relating to animals and you entered the word "Jaguar" you would be returned far different results from say a car enthusiast who searched frequently for different types of vehicles and also typed in the word "Jaguar"", noted Scott. Relevancy Rank helps to provide you with the most relevant results based on your previous search behavior.

With the end users expectations continuing to grow, these twists on the way that results are gathered and displayed are an enormous help in satisfying the user's hunger to get to the results that they are looking for. I am quite anxious to see how these new forms of search technology fair out over the next several months. One thing is for sure, these new technologies are sure to revolutionize the way that web search is conducted and pave a new path for the evolution of search.

Tyler Huston is the SEO Manager for Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning Inc. Beanstalk is proud to offer their guaranteed seo services to clients from around the world. To keep updated on the latest going's on in the search engine world watch for Tyler's posts on the Beanstalk guaranteed seo services.

residential cleaning services Lincolnshire ..

In The News:

House Bill 469 would prevent AI systems from owning property, serving as executives, or gaining legal personhood in Ohio under Representative Thaddeus Claggett's proposal.

Public voter records expose retirees' personal details to election scammers who create targeted cons using names, addresses, and voting history data.

Instead of fearing what comes next with artificial intelligence, think outside the box. Here are high-earning AI jobs that don't require a computer science degree.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says polite words like "please" and "thank you" cost millions annually, while direct prompts may improve ChatGPT accuracy by several points.

Chattee Chat and GiMe Chat exposed intimate conversations and photos, revealing users spent up to $18,000 on AI companions before the breach.

New Instagram parental controls allow families to manage teen screen time and content limits through the Family Center with stricter safety settings.

Third-party security breach at Discord exposes sensitive user information including government IDs, highlighting cybersecurity risks from external service providers.

Survey of 1,000 students shows teens using AI for personal relationships while two-thirds of parents remain unaware of their children's AI usage.

Cybersecurity experts warn about a ShadowLeak vulnerability that weaponized ChatGPT's Deep Research agent to steal personal data from Gmail accounts through hidden commands.

Tesla's Full Self-Driving system faces federal investigation following 58 reports of crashes, with six vehicles running red lights before colliding with other cars.

The Fox News AI Newsletter brings you the latest developments on artificial intelligence, with news on OpenAI moving to soon allow erotica for adult users.

Eric Schmidt alerts that hackers can reverse-engineer AI models to bypass safety measures, citing examples like the jailbroken ChatGPT variant called DAN.

Cybercriminals exploit Microsoft Teams through impersonation, malicious links and fake profiles to gather intel and deliver ransomware to personal and work devices.

Google, Dior, Allianz and dozens of other companies lost sensitive customer data in Salesforce-related breaches affecting millions of records across multiple sectors.

Apple launches iOS 26 with new Preview app that combines document editing, PDF annotation and scanning features into one streamlined iPhone experience.

New AI road monitoring system uses sensor-embedded fabric to predict infrastructure problems, potentially reducing maintenance costs and traffic disruptions for cities.

Holiday charity scams target retirees through lookalike organization names, untraceable payment requests, and data broker information to steal donations.

The Federal Trade Commission says criminals are posing as IRS agents, law enforcement officers or other officials, often over the phone or online, to steal thousands of dollars at a time.

AI phishing scams now use voice cloning and deepfake technology to trick victims, but Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson reveals warning signs to watch for.

Inversion Space unveils Arc, a reusable reentry vehicle that can deliver up to 500 pounds of cargo from orbit to anywhere on Earth in under an hour.

Red flags like processing fees, urgent countdowns and requests for full Social Security numbers expose fraudulent settlement sites targeting consumers.

Comprehensive analysis of Google Maps, Waze and Apple Maps examines usability, routing accuracy, data handling and features across the top navigation platforms.

Expert analysis reveals whether wired Ethernet or wireless Wi-Fi connections are safer for home internet use, plus practical steps to secure your network from attackers.

Australian construction robot Charlotte uses sand, crushed brick and recycled glass to 3D print fireproof, floodproof homes with reduced carbon footprint.

Cybercriminals are using fake invitation emails to trick recipients into downloading malware and stealing personal information and data.

The Evolution Of Search

Web Development