To say that the most well-known website in China, Baidu should be the well-deserved first place; to say that we use the most frequently used website every day, although everyone’s usage habits and work needs are different, the major mainstream search engines are still among the best. However, do you really understand these powerful Internet “companions” that are indispensable in your work and study? Do you actually use them? I hope that through this small article, you can lead you in front of the screen to form a basic understanding of the basic principles of the current mainstream search engines, and hereby promise that it will not involve too much professional knowledge (after all, I don’t know much…), and more importantly Yes, I hope to use my little bit of experience and knowledge to help you learn to use search engines to search for various content better.
Fundamentals of Search Engines
(Note: The search engines mentioned here refer to search tools in a narrow sense , such as Google, Baidu, Microsoft Bing, etc., not generalized search engines, such as search engines that search for specific types of files, or search content posts within major applications The search function of , only the basic principles of the narrow search engine are described.)
First look at the definition, a search engine refers to a system that uses a specific computer program to collect information on the Internet according to a certain strategy, organizes and processes the collected information, and provides users with retrieval services. From the definition point of view, the function realization of a search engine mainly goes through the following three steps:
1. Obtain information from the Internet. Search engines mainly crawl web pages from major servers connected to the Internet through specific computer programs – spider system programs (also known as crawlers), and crawl to other web pages along all URLs in various web pages. Extend the crawling “tentacles” and collect all crawled pages.
2. Organize the collected information and build an index database. A specific analysis program analyzes the collected web pages, extracts relevant information on the web pages (including URL, web page content and its keywords, relationships with other web pages, etc.) The relevance of specific keywords, and the index database is established after sorting according to the relevance. The relevance and ranking here is the basis of the answer presented when you search for content in a certain search engine. Different search engines obtain different content orders based on different indicators. For example, an advertisement that was exposed a few years ago The merchants can pay for a specific order, which has been widely criticized by netizens. Therefore, the ranking of the presented search content is also one of the important indicators to judge whether a search engine can improve our search efficiency.
It is worth mentioning that most of the current search engines support the “hyperlink analysis” technology, which not only analyzes the content of the web page itself, but also analyzes all the URLs, titles, text content of links to the web page in the index database, and even the surrounding links. related text, etc. This is why sometimes, even if a certain word does not appear in page A, but page B has a link to page A, and the keyword appears in a certain part of page B, then page A will also appear in the user’s search. It is considered to have a certain degree of relevance by search engines and thus appears in the search results. The “Hyperlink Analysis” technology has raised the coverage and breadth of user search results to a new level.
3. To provide users with retrieval services. After the user enters a keyword in the search box to search, the search engine organizes the web page links and page content abstracts of the search results according to the index in the database and presents them to the user. The user can click the corresponding link according to the abstract content to enter the relevant webpage for further search. the information you want.
Classification of search engines
Full text search engine:
The ones we use the most every day are full-text search engines, such as Google, Microsoft Bing, Baidu, etc. These search engines extract information from various websites from the Internet and build their own databases. When users enter keywords, they retrieve matching information, and then organize the content in a certain order to present the results on the user’s computer screen.
Microsoft Bing search engine
Directory index search engine:
The most representative directory index search engine is the famous Yahoo! Well, this type of search engine is different from the search engines we use in the conventional sense. They do not operate in the workflow described above, but only provide users with a series of website links classified by directory. Users can also make inquiries without entering any keywords, and only select the website they want to conduct in-depth inquiries by browsing a list of website links in a specific directory and artificially provided abstract information. Generally speaking, directory index search engines rely on manual establishment and manual classification of included websites, which results in a smaller search range and a relatively slower update speed.
Yahoo!
Meta search engine:
When a meta-search engine accepts a user’s query request, it searches on multiple other search engines at the same time, and returns the results to the user in a specific order. relatively low. Famous meta-search engines include InfoSpace, Dogpile, etc. Different meta-search engines have their own characteristics in arranging search results.
In addition to the above three types of search engines, there are also the following types of search engines: collective search engines, portal search engines, free link directories, etc., which will not be repeated here due to the limited space, and interested friends can learn more about them by themselves.
Some tips to improve search efficiency:
About search engines:
Different search engines get very different search results for the same keyword, which also results in different search efficiency when using different search engines. Generally speaking, for different search engines, the currently widely recognized ranking of search efficiency and accuracy is: Google > Microsoft Bing > Baidu > other search engines (such as 360 search, etc.). Of course, just like “cabbage and radishes have their own preferences”, there is no absolute standard answer for the ranking of search engines. Different users can choose a search engine that suits them according to their usage habits and content preferences. The so-called search engine “disdain chain” It’s just a joke. However, with the original intention of helping everyone, I still want to give you some small suggestions based on my personal experience: use Google if you can use Google, and Microsoft Bing if you can’t use Google is also a good choice. It will also introduce some search techniques with Microsoft Bing as the main use. (Of course, I didn’t mean to start a fight or look down on a certain degree.)
Tips for using search engines:
Note: The following search techniques can be used in mainstream search engines such as Google, Microsoft Bing, and Baidu.
1. Keyword search
In fact, most of us use some search techniques to some extent, and the most widespread of all is “keyword search”, that is, replacing a whole sentence with a keyword to search for the information we want.
2. Use specific symbols
(1) “+”: Find web pages that contain all keywords preceded by a “+” sign. For example, if you want to search for RSS content in the minority, you can use “Minority + RSS”, and the search results will return all webpages that contain RSS keywords and are related to the minority. Note: It is best to follow the keyword after the “+” sign, and try not to have spaces in the middle.
(2) “”””: Find the exact word in the phrase. If you enter such a sentence in the search box: “What are the advanced search skills in Microsoft Bing”, the search engine will automatically split this sentence into several keywords for matching. But what if I just want to match exactly what I entered? The answer is to use “”” to frame the content you want to search, that is, “”Have you eaten?” (don’t ask me why I didn’t search for “”What are the advanced search skills in Microsoft Bing”? matching content…). In addition, when I was experimenting, I found that if you use “”” in Chinese, Microsoft Bing will still divide the input into keywords for search, but if you use “”” in English, Microsoft Bing will will search the input as an indivisible whole, and tell me that I don’t have what I want…
(3) “AND or &”: Find web pages that contain all keywords. In fact, the “space” key that we hit in the middle of different keywords when we search every day plays the above role. That is to say, when you connect a series of keywords with “space” or “AND” or “&”, the search engine will try to return the page content that contains all the keywords. Under normal circumstances, this technique is not used, because the search engine has set the “space” to this function very carefully.
(4) “NOT or -“: Exclude pages that contain a certain keyword. “NOT or -” comes in handy when you don’t want a specific keyword in your search results. You just need to add “-” before the keyword you want to exclude, and the search engine will return you the page content that does not contain this keyword. For example, you don’t want to see the shadow of RSS in the search content about minorities, then you just need to enter “minority-RSS” to get the answer you want after excluding RSS.
(5) “OR or |”: Find web pages that contain a certain keyword. The difference between “OR or |” and “AND or &” is that the former wants to search based on any one of multiple keywords, while the latter wants to include all multiple input keywords as much as possible in the search results. For example, after typing “minority OR RSS”, the search engine will return you web content that includes “minority” or includes “RSS”.
(6) “()”: Find or exclude web pages that contain a set of keywords. Do I have to add “+” or “-” when I want to include or exclude a long list of keywords from my search results? Of course not, “()” can help you solve this dilemma. You only need to enclose the keywords you want with “()”, and then add the symbols you want in front to achieve the above effect. Therefore, “()” is usually used in conjunction with other techniques to make your search a little more efficient.
By the way, Microsoft’s official documentation also gives the following precautions:
Both NOT and OR must be capitalized, otherwise search engines will choose to ignore them to speed up full-text searches;
Only the first 10 keywords entered can be used to obtain search results;
The above symbols are prioritized according to the following order: “()” “”” “- or +” “&” “|”;
Since “OR” is the lowest precedence operator, use quotation marks around “OR” when it is used with other operators.
3. Use specific keywords
The same as using specific symbols to limit the search content, Microsoft Bing also provides several keywords for more powerful search customization process. The main difference between these keywords and symbols is that symbols are more for you to enter keywords. A combination of keywords when conducting a search, and keywords are restricted to a specific feature of web content. You may not understand what it means when you see it here. I believe the following content can answer your confusion. The following is the interpretation and performance display of the role of each keyword. Note: The following keywords do not need a space after the colon.
(1) “contains:”: Make sure that the search results are locked to the web page with the specified file type link. For example, if you want to search for websites that contain e-books in pdf format, you can type “book contains: pdf” and the search engine will return you all websites that contain e-books in pdf format.
(2) “ext:”: Only return web pages with the specified file extension. For example, if you want to search for a document in pdf format, you can enter “ext:pdf” after entering a keyword, and the search engine will return you the web page that contains the document in pdf format. However, I found during the actual measurement that this technique does not seem to be easy to use in Microsoft Bing, and it is more supported in Google, but I hope that friends who use this technique in Microsoft Bing do not have to worry, the following The “filetype:” keyword to be mentioned can also achieve better results.
Use “ext:” in Google
(3) “filetype:”: Only web pages created with the specified file type are returned. Unlike “ext:”, using the “filetype:” keyword will get a link to a specific document instead of the web page containing the document, which improves the search efficiency of some search processes.
(4) “inanchor: or inbody: or intitle:”: These keywords respectively return web pages whose metadata contains the specified term (such as the site’s anchor, body or title). Only one term can be specified per keyword, and as many keyword entries can be concatenated as desired. Anchors in web pages are a type of hyperlinks, but the hyperlinks that we encounter on a daily basis may point to specific keywords, which are used to jump pages to explain web pages for other keywords; while anchors are web pages For internal hyperlinks, after marking a specific location in a web page, set an anchor point at a specific location to quickly jump to that location. For example, a “back to top” button is an anchor that quickly jumps to the very top of a page. Closer to home, when you want to specify a specific element inside a web page, you can use the above three keywords to limit your search.
(5) “ip:”: Find the website hosted by the specified IP address. The IP address must be separated into four parts by dots. For example, to query the web page hosted under the IP address 180.149.132.47, just enter “ip:180.149.132.47”.
(6) “language:”: Return to the webpage of the specified language, and specify the language code after the “language:” keyword. For example, enter “RSS language:en” to search for RSS-related information pages in English. Bing provides a list of available language codes as follows: Countries and regions and their language codes .
(7) “loc: or location:”: returns the webpage from the specified country or region. The country or region code can be specified directly after “loc:” (see the preceding list of language codes for a list of codes). To specify multiple countries or regions at the same time, use “OR” to organize languages. For example, to search for web pages from the US or UK about RSS, enter “RSS (loc:US OR loc:GB)”.
(8) “prefer:”: Add emphasis to search keywords to help lock search results. For example, to search for pages related to basketball, but your search is primarily limited to the Los Angeles Lakers, you would enter “basketball prefer: Los Angeles Lakers”.
(9) “site:”: Returns the web pages belonging to the specified site. If you want to focus on two or more domains, you can use “OR” to organize the domains. For example, to find pages about RSS on a minority site, enter “RSS site: sspai.com” to search.
(10) “feed:”: Find the RSS or Atom feed of the input keyword. Yes, Microsoft Bing even defines special keywords for searching RSS feeds, which shows the importance of RSS. If you want to search for an RSS feed about basketball, just enter “feed:basketball”. For RSS users, it can greatly improve the search efficiency of finding their favorite RSS feeds.
(11) “hasfeed:”: Find web pages on the Internet that contain RSS or Atom feeds related to search keywords. Also a keyword for searching RSS feeds about content. For example, if you wanted to search for pages in the minority that contained RSS feeds, you would enter “site:sspai.com hasfeed:basketball”.
(12) “url:”: Check if the listed domain or URL is in the Bing index. From the basic principles of search engines, we can know that search engines organize web pages crawled from the Internet according to specific strategies and build an index database. The function of this keyword is to help us query whether a website is included in the index database by Microsoft Bing. For example, if you want to verify that the minority is in Microsoft’s Bing index database, you can enter “url:sspai.com” to query.
Note: The above keyword usages are all from Microsoft’s Bing official documents , some of the features and functions introduced may not be applicable in mainland China, for example, the last three keywords I have not succeeded…
Write at the end:
The above content is just some tips that may be used to improve efficiency in the process of using search engines to search for content. There are more practical skills for us to discover and choose about “search” itself, for example, to collect the desired data on a specific website , find some powerful websites to find various resources, and you can also use suitable Internet access methods to expand the scope of Internet search, etc… The world of “search” is very large, and there are many skills and methods for us to explore. Actively leave a message in the comment area, and share with you the wonderful skills and tricks that you have summarized in the process of searching for information for many years.
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