A search engine or search service is a program designed to help find information stored on a computer system such as the World Wide Web, inside a corporate or proprietary network or a personal computer. The search engine allows one to ask for content meeting specific criteria (typically those containing a given word or phrase) and retrieves a list of references that match those criteria. Search engines use regularly updated indexes to operate quickly and efficiently. Without further qualification, search engine usually refers to a Web search engine, which searches for information on the public Web. Other kinds of search engine are enterprise search engines, which search on intranets, personal search engines, which search individual personal computers, and mobile search engines. However, while different selection and relevance criteria may apply in different environments, the user will probably perceive little difference between operations in these. Some search engines also mine data available in newsgroups, large databases, or open directories like DMOZ.org. Unlike Web directories, which are maintained by human editors, search engines operate algorithmically. Most web sites which call themselves search engines are actually front ends to search engines owned by other companies.

History

---

The very first tool used for searching on the Internet was Archie. (The name stands for "archive" without the "v", not the character from the 'Archie' comic book series). It was created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal. The program downloaded the directory listings of all the files located on public anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites, creating a searchable database of filenames.

While Archie indexed computer files, Gopher indexed plain text documents. Gopher was created in 1991 by Mark McCahill at the University of Minnesota. (The program was named after the school's mascot). Because these were text files, most of the Gopher sites became Web sites after the creation of the World Wide Web.

More on [ Search engine ]

Search Blog

Bing iPhone app – upcoming fixes
Kristin Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:26:00 -0000
The response so far to the Bing app for iPhone has been incredible; we are excited by the strong customer response and download traffic! However, we’ve also heard about a couple of issues that we’d like to address: 1.       Using voice search outside the U.S. crashes the app. We’ve identified that the issue relates to the region the phone is set to. We’re working on a fix for this right now, and we’ll update the app in the next few days. People will get the update automatically – you won’t have to update or reinstall the app. If you are encountering this issue you can temporarily work around it by going to Settings > General > International and change your Region Format to “United States.”  2.       App doesn’t work on 1st generation iPod Touch. The Bing app officially supports 2nd generation iPod Touch devices, but we’re in the process of testing those 1st generation devices as well. We’ll announce support for that as soon as testing is complete. 3.       No search results outside the U.S. At this time Bing is only fully supported on the iPhone for the US; in some regions people may not be seeing results at all. While there was a brief period of which the Bing iPhone app was being offered in international markets at this time international availability has been suspended. We would like to apologize for the inconvenience and we hope to expand our support and availability of the app in other regions in future versions of the Bing app for the iPhone. If you are in the US or if you are encountering this issue and or you are looking for a  temporarily work around go to Settings > General > International and change your Region Format to “United States.”  Your feedback has been really helpful, so keep it coming. Justin Jed – Bing for mobile Bing for mobile comes to the iPhone Bing: Connecting People, Places and Things Bing™ for mobile availability continues to grow Mobile Madness Round 2… Then and Now Bing for mobile now live at m.bing.com Use Your Voice to Text, Call and Search with Bing Mobile Madness is Upon Us
Last-minute gift ideas and great deals
Kristin Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:48:00 -0000
My sister is one of those smug shoppers that purchased her final Christmas gift back in August, but perhaps you’re normal like me and you still need a couple last-minute gifts. Maybe you’ve come up blank and have no idea what to get your mother-in-law. You may have forgotten someone on your list, received an unexpected gift and now feel obligated to reciprocate, or maybe you just procrastinated and now you need to pull the shopping equivalent of an “all nighter”. Never fear! Bing has got you covered. In fact, there’s still plenty of time for you to shop from the warmth and comfort of your couch, get great cashback savings, and make sure your gifts are delivered in time to be stashed underneath the Christmas tree. Here are a few last-minute deals for you to consider: ·         Get 20% cashback from Sears and you can get free shipping with a minimum purchase this Thursday and Friday 12/17-18. Search for “sears cashback” and look for the cashback coin. ·         Books are a terrific last-minute gift! Save 12% cashback at Barnes & Noble (just remember that their Nook isn’t eligible for cashback) ·         Shop at Macy’s and you’ll have 20% cashback coming your way. ·         Pick up some shoes or handbags from Endless and get 20% cashback, plus they’re offering free overnight shipping and free returns. You can order up to 5pm on 12/23 and still receive your order by Christmas Day! ·         Gap is offering 25% cashback on all their brands, including Old Navy and Banana Republic.  If you’re still completely stumped, check out our gift guides for ideas for Him, for Her, for Kids and by Price. Your smug sister will never need to know about your eleventh-hour shopping rampage. So quit procrastinating already and get going. Happy last-minute shopping! Kelly Scott, cashback Product Manager Other posts of interest: Ellen is going Bing for the holidays Online holiday shopping tips by Mary Hunt cashback 101
Bing for mobile comes to the iPhone
Kristin Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:00:00 -0000
Bing on your mobile phone just keeps getting better.  Today we are happy to announce the first official Bing App for iPhone and iPod touch.  You can now download the free Bing App from your phone in the App Store, from your computer at iTunes, or go to m.bing.com and we will redirect you to the app store.  Let’s talk about some cool stuff you can do with the Bing App.  Our investments in voice search (you may have played with them on Windows phones or BlackBerry already) continues in our iPhone App and works great for map locations as well as old fashioned web search.  Just say “San Francisco weather,” for a quick result, or even say a full address for a map or directions.  Try something complex, like “1 Microsoft Way, Redmond 98052.” (Yes, I know how to get to work.) Hold the phone to your ear and speak, or press the mic button—simple.  Speaking of directions (ha), looking for a coffee shop nearby? Bing automatically finds your location.  It’s also easy to discover a new spot by category such as restaurants, banks, theaters and choose whether you want walking or driving directions. We’ve got smooth mapping action. Swipe through each step of the directions, and check out how fast the map pans and zooms.  (Techies take note: we use Seadragon technology for some of this.)  For times when you only have one hand free and can’t pinch, there is a handy zoom-out button. The home screen shows the Bing image of the day, complete with clickable hotspots to discover related trivia.  Want more images? Try image search with endless scrolling results (also works for any search result). Then easily flick through image previews and click through to the host site. There are a bunch of other features we’d love to tell you about, like movies, news and flight status.  But rather than drone on about them, just download the app and give it a spin.  Justin Jed – Bing for mobile Other Posts of Interest: Bing: Connecting People, Places and Things  Bing™ for mobile availability continues to grow  Mobile Madness Round 2… Then and Now Bing for mobile now live at m.bing.com Use Your Voice to Text, Call and Search with Bing Mobile Madness is Upon Us
Bing search history: The power is yours
Bing Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:43:00 -0000
My name is Sree, and I joined the Bing team just over a year ago after graduating from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Since then, my work has been focused on Bing’s history features, and it has been a wild ride. I remember when my manager first pulled me into this project; he explained the vision that trust and respect for privacy must be inherent in the features we develop, giving users the control over their information and doing it in a very transparent way. Embedded in this concept is the idea of Bing working together with you in a joint effort to create a better experience. Since then, my team has experimented with new features to understand how people search, what features work (and what don’t), and how we can best enable people to make decisions using Bing. We then built the foundation of Bing history with the intent to improve your ability to quickly complete your search related tasks by remembering your past actions and to help get you back to your previously called on information. What does all this mean for you? I think about this in terms of the searches that I did when I was thinking of moving to the Seattle area. I began at a search engine, visited a few sites to learn more about the city, does it really rain 9 months a year? Where should I live? Should I rent or buy? Are there any good places to ski? While I usually tried to block out some time in my schedule to do this research, I often found myself interrupted. An hour (and sometimes a few days) later, I went back to the search engine to pick up where I left off, entering some of the same queries I conducted earlier in my research. Now, with Bing history, I wouldn’t have to remember or repeat all the same searches. Bing history gives you easy access to your recent queries from the Bing home page, search results page, and a history page that automatically organizes your search history chronologically. Below is an example of a recent shopping experience I had online:               image: Recent search history w/ “see all” “turn off” and “clear all       image: Both recent and frequent search history on Bing Home page w/controls    image: Your history page with granular controls We understand that search history can be very personal, which is why my team has focused on developing a service where we’ve tried to build privacy and respect for your search history into the overall experience and not as an afterthought. By focusing on transparency, user control and usability, we believe we have the right approach in place to do that. Here’s what we offer: · Off/On switch:  It seems pretty simple, but providing you with tools to make choices is central to what we are building.  With one click, you can choose to turn history on or off directly on the search results page or, if you’re returning, on the homepage. About to perform a search that you don’t want to remember as part of your history? Just click Turn off and new searches are no longer remembered.  Want to get back to building your search history? You can just as easily turn it back on. Your on/off state will be maintained indefinitely, as long as you don’t clear your browser cookies. · Transparency:  Click See all to get a complete view of the history data that Bing is storing for you. For this release, you’ll find all queries you make using our web search and the sites you click associated with that query. We’ll be checking customer feedback to see what additional information might make search history more useful, and how to better expose it to our customers. · Control: Too many systems provide us with choice, but little control.  We’ve created Bing Search history with multiple layers of control.  You can remove your entire search history right on the search results page or on the homepage (just click Clear all). For finer-grained control, you can delete individual queries or sites from your history by clicking See all and then removing individual items from your history. You can also clear your entire search history directly from that page. Once you delete an item, it’s gone – it won’t appear in search history again. Currently, your search history is available for four weeks. We’ll actively monitor feedback and look at other ways to evaluate the optimal duration for enabling you to save your search history. Please note that removing your history removes it from the Search History service and prevents that history from being displayed on the site, but it does not delete information from our standard search logs. These logs are used to operate and improve our products and services, and are retained and anonymized as described in the Bing Supplement to the Microsoft Online Privacy Statement. We store the searches you make separately from any account information that directly identifies you, such as your email address or phone number. For more information, see Microsoft Online Privacy Statement. While we're delighted to get this initial set of features out the door and into your hands, we’re even more excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. It’s our hope to make it easier and easier for you to accomplish your tasks, while enabling you to make quicker and better decisions. We know that as the internet evolves so will your needs and wants, so please stay tuned for more discussion and announcements, and please let us know what you think. Remember the power is yours with a flip of the switch. -Sree Kamireddy - Bing Program Manager and Privacy Champ
A note about today’s outage
bingteam Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:49:00 -0000
Bing.com was down between about 6:30 and 7:00 PM Pacific Time on Dec 3, 2009. During this time, users were either unable to get to the site, or their queries were returning incomplete results page. The cause of the outage was a configuration change during some internal testing that had unfortunate and unintended consequences. As soon as the issue was detected, the change was rolled back, which caused the site to return to normal behavior. Unfortunately the detection and rollback took about half an hour, and during that time users were unable to use bing.com. We strive to maintain a high standard of operational excellence at Bing. We are running a post mortem to find out how our software and processes need to be improved to prevent anything like this from happening again. Satya Nadella Senior Vice President, Online Services Division
Ellen is going Bing for the holidays
bingteam Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:00:00 -0000
What better way to get in the holiday spirit then some fun giveaways and shopping! If you have seen Ellen Degeneres’s  annual 12 days of Giveaways that is starting today you know that it is sure to bring you holiday cheer and great ideas for holiday gifts. Each day Ellen will give away some very cool gifts to her studio audience and this year, the Bing team has partnered with the Ellen show to highlight the hottest picks for this year, places where you can get great deals on the items online (sorry…not for free here), and an easy way  to find more great deals for your holiday shopping. Ellen will choose new items every day until December 18th – check out http://www.bing.com/ellen every day to see the latest.    We hope for those of us not lucky enough to be in Ellen’s audience that bringing you deals on her favorite products can be the next best thing.  Kristin Meldahl – Bing  Other posts of interest: 12 Days of Giveaways Tickets Now Available!Are you seeing gold yet?!A little holiday spending money…a little trivia…Making a List and Checking it TwiceBing cashback 101  
Bing: Connecting People, Places and Things
bingteam Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:00:00 -0000
When we launched Bing last June, we began a journey that had at its core a simple idea – that as the web and our usage of it have evolved, keyword search has remained a relatively static experience.  It was still valuable for quick, navigational queries where the keyword-to-URL mapping metaphor still makes sense.  But so much customer behavior had moved beyond this simple model, and there was some real data that showed there were some unmet customer needs in the search space. We focused on moving the ball forward in a couple of key areas, most notably helping customers make faster more informed decisions.  User data shows clearly that the types of decisions we turn to search for were not being served well today.  You have heard us quote the stats before: 25% of clicks were the back button, nearly half of queries require refinement, and increasingly search sessions were longer, multi query efforts focused not on navigation but on the completion of some sort of complex task. We were proud of the initial release of Bing, but realized that it’s only a small down payment on a much longer-term effort. Over the past couple of months, we have continued shipping new features that help us continue to travel down this path.  Today we have some of our technical leadership team together with folks in San Francisco to talk about where we have been and where we are going, and demo some new features launching in Bing today. The new stuff we are sharing today is really about changing the way we think of using the web to get things done in the physical world.  When we looked at what people were doing with search, we saw that people are increasingly trying to use ‘virtual’ systems to get things done in the ‘physical’ world (See the chart below). Source: Decisions Discussion Board, November 2009, Internal Microsoft Study That told us a couple of things:  first the ‘search’ experience needs to break outside the little white box we think of as search today.  It needs to begin its morph into an assistant that understands what you’re trying to do, where you’re trying to do it, and how you’re trying to talk to it. Second, it hinted to us that the search of today – keyword to URL primarily – is not always the best way to help people get complex decisions made.  Today we’re launching a set of experiences that we think can begin to address these insights.  We think we can start to both help people get things done faster and more confidently with search and begin to help us see what is possible when we stop thinking blue links and start thinking end-to-end experiences. Location, Location, Location First let’s take a look at the new Bing Maps experience.  One of the most interesting finds we’ve made is that customers say the typical mapping experience feels disconnected from what they’re actually trying to do in the real world.  Consumers who’ve grown up on MapQuest expect maps to show them how to get from point A to point B but they find themselves increasingly relying on mapping services to connect their virtual queries to their physical world.  Many of the queries we see people making are actually rooted to physical places and decisions – think of some of the common ones you might do: Planning a weekend: what is the community saying about this weekend’s activities around the house?  What can I expect to see at the farmers market?  What is the best way to get up to the islands given traffic work on the roads? Running errands after work: how is traffic?  Is the drycleaner open to drop off clothes on the way home?  What time does the Mexican food place close and how is their takeout?  Is there an alternate route given the Coldplay concert tonight? When meeting a friend for dinner:  where can I park?  Is there an ATM nearby?  What do foodies  say about the restaurant?  If our table isn’t ready, what about the small pub next door so we can wait in style? At Bing, we dug into this disconnect between search in the virtual space (today’s standard keyword search) and search in the physical space that folks are literally doing every day.   We ended up developing something we’re introducing today: a new mapping experience that enables you to elegantly augment the things you’re already doing offline in your real life with an online experience.  We like to call this “spatial search”. We like to call the underlying technology of this experience a physical canvas: our belief is that using a physical canvas can help you accomplish those tasks that you’re already doing online but today’s search engines are making you do the work to translate the virtual results to physical decisions. A few cool features that I’m most excited about in this new spatial search experience:The first thing this canvas allows us to do is provide a seamless exploration of your physical world.  From outer space to the street outside your favorite coffee shop, the new maps view lets you zoom, pan, and move around with ease.  Our new Streetside imagery features allow you to get down to the street level and walk down the streets to find that good parking lot or figure out exactly where the door to the club is located.  Streetside is an excellent example of collaboration with Microsoft Research, Live Labs and the core maps team to build something that isn’t just a bunch of pictures stitched together, but an actual physical environment on top of which we can provide an experience that connects to information from across the web. Which leads us to something I’m most excited about: our new Application Gallery.  This new platform, which is in limited release today, enables us to provide “mash-ins” on top of this new physical canvas.  The applications that we’re shipping today really highlight how information can transform into knowledge when imbued with a spatial dimension.  A few of the cool apps we’re shipping include: Twitter: You can now see tweets on the map from their originating location.  Get realtime updates about events, breaking news, or even just tweets from your buddies about the quality of coffee at their favorite coffee house. Local Lens: Here we actually index local blogs from around the US and using the clues in the posts, try and place them physically on a map.  You can use it to do things like see community happenings in your neighborhood. It’s an entirely new way to consume local crowdsourced information – something 72% of customers do routinely on the web. What’s Nearby: So you’ve found the address of the business meeting you have, but where can you go to sync up your computer before the meeting?  With “What’s Nearby” we conduct implicit searches on your behalf to examine the physical canvas and show you types of businesses and services around your final destination.   You don’t even have to query – we do it all for you in the background and bring back results sorted into categories so you can easily find the nearest coffee shop with WiFi. In addition to the new imagery in Streetside and the new platform technology, we have done some work to enable Photosynths generated by the community at large to be integrated into maps.  Imagine looking at a map of a city, and being able not only to go from outer space to the street, but being able to experience the location in a new and interesting way. Try this one – search for the ‘metropolitan museum of art in New York City’.  Enable Photosynths by clicking on the orange arrow in the bottom of the left pane. Choose the Photosynth map app and then click through to explore the museum in amazing detail.  The number and quality of community generated synths will continue to increase giving amazing context and texture to geo-spatial searching. There are many more so go check them out.  We’re working hard to make this platform available to more developers in the future.  We’ve seen the community around mash-ups for location based services exploding and we want to enable a simpler way for these to be developed, shared, and layered without a person having to have their own dedicated hosting platform.  Search on the Go We want the decision making tools in Bing to be available anywhere you need them.  This means a great experience on the mobile phone.  But the needs and scenarios and way we interact with the service are obviously different.  In a recent study, 70% of mobile search task were completed in one hour and 80% were completed in 1 day.  In contrast, only 35% of PC search tasks were completed in one hour and only 40% were completed in 1 day.  Even after a week, only 55% of PC search tasks were completed.  What did that tell us?  We needed to build something better for mobile that responds to the types of searches people are doing on these devices. Our new Bing app for Windows Mobile is specifically designed for these devices and is tailored for the quick, on-the-go searches that go hand in hand with mobile devices – we like to think of it as your personal and local search engine.  We’ve worked to build a number of functions that takes search “beyond the box”: Type Less, search more: Typing can be tough on small devices.  Now you can easily speak your search query into your phone and let Bing do the rest.  We’ve really worked to improve the quality of recognition and level of understanding we have when you speak – I always use this first now. Map Your Way: Quickly access maps, driving directions and traffic information so you can find where you are and get where you are going. The new application also includes an improved auto-locate feature to show your current location. Act Locally: Wherever you are, Bing makes it easy to find a nearby business, a new restaurant, or even a local movie theatre with the latest show times.   You can quickly and easily bookmark locations and businesses for later reference. Get Quick Answers:  Make decisions fast and on the go with the top web results and instant answers for your pressing questions. Save favorites and recent searches to a list so that you don’t have to repeat searches. You can get this today at http://discoverbing.com/mobile/ or by going to m.bing.com on your Windows Mobile device. Turbocharge Your Browser’s Search Last, we want to introduce the new “Bing Bar” for Internet Explorer and Firefox.  You can think of it as a ‘virtual assistant’ that keeps you informed, keeps you connected, and helps you get things done using search.   Go check out the whole bar at http://discoverbing.com/toolbar/  but be sure you don’t miss these great new features: Search Assist – start typing in the search box and see suggested searches, image suggestions, and your search history. Notice also how as soon as you signal to us that you’re going to ‘search’ we expose the search options (like images, videos, etc) in the bar. Browse Plus – sometimes you don’t want to search – you want knowledge and information to come to you.  The Bing Bar pulls content from across the web and will even alert you to breaking news when it’s happening. You can also tell the bar to watch things for you – like stocks and sports – and let it handle the searches for you. No-Fail Cash Detector: let the Bing Bar help you save money when shopping online.  Do a search on a site like craigslist.org and the Bing Bar conducts a “search” on your behalf, figures out if there are merchants where you can get Bing Cashback on that product, and alerts you by flashing the Cashback icon. We know, long post, lots of data, lots of new features.  We’re tired too.  But we think there is such tremendous opportunity to do more for customers with search, sometimes we can’t help it.  We want to wish everyone a safe, healthy and happy holiday season, and we’ll be at the grindstone in 2010, so stay tuned.  Who knows, maybe we’ll surprise you with a couple of last-minute gifts before Father Time comes in to mess up the naughties.  And remember you can always go to http://www.behindbing.com to stay updated on the latest stuff happening on the product.    Satya NadellaSenior Vice President, Online Services  
Space, the final frontier
Bing Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:00:00 -0000
Lately I have been hearing a ton about outer space, space travel, life in space, space hotels…I think I could go on and on. Anyways, Bing and Microsoft have been doing some interesting partnership in the science /outer space sector. The first project that I absolutely love is called “Captain Mike’s Mars Adventure.” Bing has partnered with Seattle’s Pacific Science Center (PSC) to bring an online Mars experience to 1st- 8th graders. If your kids are home for the holidays, this is a great activity that looks fun and educational at the same time. The site takes you on a journey with “Captain Mike” as he prepares for his trip to Mars. As part of the trivia contest, kids are asked questions about Mars to help Captain Mike learn about the planet before his trip.  For each correct answer, kids earn a star to add to their Interplanetary Explorer badge – because all kids should have one. After helping prepare Captain Mike for his trip, the kids are able to draw what they think their first day on Mars would look like and submit their drawing for a chance to win a trip to attend the opening of the “Facing Mars” exhibit at PSC, money for their school to put towards science programs, and some pretty sweet computer gear.  Unfortunately, this contest is for Washington State students only but no matter where you are from your kids can still play with the site online! The great thing about this site is that it also has activities geared towards teachers. Wahoo! I know my teacher friends are going to love this. For the full details and to get started in your space exploration, make sure you check out the site at: www.pacificsciencecenter.com/marscontest Microsoft has also highlighted the work they are doing with NASA on their Mars exploration at this year’s PDC conference. They are looking to all of us to get involved with their Mars project through a site called Be A Martian. On the site you can help improve Martian maps, take part in research tasks, and assist Mars science teams studying data. They are also offering prizes to software developers that create tools that can help provide access to and help analyze the hundreds of thousands of Mars images for online, classroom and Mars mission team use. So whether you are a kid in school looking for some extracurricular activities over the holidays, a teacher of science, a developer who loves space and or just someone like me wanting to take a tour of Mars, there is something for you! Kristin Meldahl – Rookie Space Explorer Other posts of interest: It Really is Rocket Science
“Home Sweet Homepage”
Bing Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:01:00 -0000
Due to the great response to our first homepage photo contest, we are super excited to launch Bing’s Home Sweet Homepage photo contest! Our first photo contest had more than 10,000 entries and upwards of half a million votes. The winning photo came from Jeremy Somers of Australia and was recently featured in a national television campaign in the United States. (Please visit the site to view this media) Jeremy’s win made national news in Australia, was featured on blogs and brought a lot of exposure to his work. Although we can’t make any promises about the amount of exposure and community love that the winner of this photo contest will get, we can say that the winning image will be featured on the Bing homepage in early January. So grab your cameras and get ready to start shooting! The theme of this contest is “hometown pride.” It’s an opportunity for you to take photos that demonstrate the beauty of the places you live in and call home. The goal of the daily images on the Bing homepage is to inspire a sense of exploration and delight through a single stunning image that draws you in to the search adventure. So we’re looking for photos of your hometowns that do just that; draw people in and make them want to learn more and feel the pride you have for your town. All of the details and information for the contest can be found on our Bing Facebook page (to go live at 9:00AM). The winner will be decided by a combination of popular votes in the first round, editorial selection before the finals, and by popular vote in the finals. The winner will be announced on December 21, with the winning photo appearing on the homepage on January 6, 2010. We were so impressed with the last round of submissions we can’t wait to see what you capture this time! Kristin Meldahl – Bing   Other posts of interest: It’s a Full Moon for Bing Today Welcome home The Eye of the Storm – Jeremy Somers

Subscribe to Search_Engines RSS feed