Analysis of a Search Engine

Analysis of a Search Engine

Introduction and description of the search engine

URL of the search engine: http://uk.yahoo.com/

Yahoo! is one of the most commonly used search engines on the internet because of its worldwide reputation and because of the wide range of services offered by the actual company Yahoo! .

The “Search” box is located at the top of the page (as we can see in Pic1). When you type a query in the “Search” box there’s an option called “Search Assist”, which basically helps the user by auto-completing his query or suggesting new topics related to the initial query. (Pic2)

Pic1

Pic2

To make it easier for the user to search, Yahoo! search engine has search tabs, which are essentially telling the search engine what kind of information to look for (videos, images, articles, etc.). Another helpful feature of Yahoo! search engine is the “Advanced Search” feature, which turns out to be really helpful when the user is searching for more specific things.

Taking into consideration its popularity and its large database, I believe that the Yahoo! search engine is covering a wide range of materials including videos, pictures, news, articles and blogs.

Types of queries the system is designed to support

The Yahoo! search engine is supported by an extensive database and therefore, it should be able to support all sorts of queries. For example, let us say the user wants to visit Athens next summer, so he will type in the search box “Athens holiday” and the results will be shown just like in the image below (Pic3):

Pic3

At the top of the results page are the “Sponsored Results”, which are basically just like paid advertisements and they are displayed different from the other results in order for the user to tell them apart. However, sponsor results may be ranked high, even though they are not really relevant to the query the user made (the user might not look for a place to rent in Athens as he has a relative living...