Chapter 3 Summary
I use Google and other search engines multiple times a day, but I wasn't sure exactly how everything worked . I always assumed that when I typed in a search expression, the browser was just a control for the internet. But, in module 3 I realised that an engine is actually a website that searches its own database of information that it has already collected and stored. It was interesting to see how browsers use a program called a web robot, or a spider, to automatically search the web and find new sites to update that database.
Something else I realised was the difference between the types of results I see. I didn't know that a "hit" is specifically a webpage that is indexed in the database and matches whatever i searched . I also learned that search engines can tell the difference between a natural language query and a regular keyword search by using a process called parsing. It is also good to know now that "sponsored links" are paid placements, which are different from the banner ads that usually appear in a box at the top or side of the page. Knowing this helps me distinguish between what is an ad and what is actual information.
What really surprised me though was learning about "dead links." I’ve clicked on links before that didn't work, but I didn't know that when a website has a number of these, it would suffer from link rot. I also found the section on search operators interesting. I saw that I could use specific commands like "site:" to restrict results to a specific website or "filetype:" to find specific files like a pdf or xls. I think this could be helpful for when I need to find specific documents without sifting through regular websites.