Google is the pre-eminent search engine and the largest, expanding the number of pages it indexes in early 2004 to 4.28 billion pages but a large portion - perhaps more than a billion of those pages - are unindexed and therefore unsearchable. While a few other tools will likely catch up in size, Google remains among the most innovative ones.
Launched in 1999 and developed by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, two Stanford University graduate students, Google has made its mark for its relevance-ranking based on link analysis and for its spare, simple, minimalist design. That sparse home page masks many great Google features that are not always easy to find or use. You need to look at the tabs on the search bar, and also spend time on the advanced and preference pages. Also, a must is a visit to the Google Help pages.
Google uses what it calls a popularity engine, ranking its search results based on the degree to which other pages refer or link to a page. Its "PageRank" analysis, which gives greater weight to authoritative sites, helps you find material that is directly relevant to what you are looking for. What separates Google from the others is that it is simple to use and its top few results tend to be remarkably accurate - its deceptively simple basic interface give you little control, but great results.
Google was the first general search engine that provided access to pages at the time they were indexed, which they call "cached" pages. This feature allows you to find pages that are no longer available on the Internet - a very useful research tool, which other search engines like AlltheWeb have duplicated. For more control, use Google's advanced features. Google also offers an easily searchable version of the Open Directory, adding Google's page ranking to the directory.
Google continues to add innovations while attempting to stay true to its original design idea of function over form. Google's search features are limited on the front page and the tabs above the search bar, but many more options are available on the Advanced Search page. Google always searches for pages containing all the words in your query, and automatically adds the word AND between your words so you do not need to use a plus sign (+) in front of words. To eliminate things in your search, you must use "for NOT." To require words to be put together, use quotation marks around the phrase you are looking for. While you cannot do a proximity search on Google, you can use a wildcard within a phrase to get proximity searching up to a distance of three words.
Google has also added asterisk searching for missing words, so you can search for "Lord ** Rings" to bring up references to the Lord of the Rings movies. Google is also the only search engine that searches for some characters. You can search for ampersands and underscore characters by themselves or as part of a character string in an advanced search. It also has set up a synonyms feature by using the tilde sign next to a word, but results sometimes offer offbeat surprises.
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Note: This article was sent to us by: Landon Griffith at 08282010
1. Paid placement is just one of the ways a search engine makes money
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