The impetus for information retrieval is an information need expressed in an information request. Depending on the degree of involvement of technical means and human participation in the information search, a distinction is made: “manual”, “machine”, and “automated” information search.
Based on the above definitions, we can conclude that the means of the information search is a set of techniques, actions to find, select, provide the necessary information, which has the desired characteristics, and its use to solve a specific problem.
The fundamental way to search for information is based on the fact that a few words that the user specifies are guessed desires, and the links are taken to the desired resources. This approach to finding information is so successful that it is hard to remember how users were trying to find the information they needed before the advent of search tools by keyword.
Consider the universal search engines
Search engines were created to structure the information accumulated on the Internet and provide its users with convenient search tools for finding the necessary data. With their help, you can quickly find the information you need, instantly get any detailed help in a computer encyclopedia, etc.
Search engines let you find individual www-document related to a given subject or provided with given keywords or keyword combinations. Both search methods (by concept hierarchy and by keywords) are available on large search servers.
The search servers are populated automatically (they continuously monitor all www-servers in the world) or manually (with a selection of material). In the encyclopedia of search engines (searchengines), you can read the news of various search engines, articles about how search engines work and indexing sites, as well as tips on optimizing sites for search engines.
The most famous search engines
Google is one of the most significant search engines on the Internet. Google developers sought to create a search engine available to every Internet user without using any special knowledge. One of the undeniable advantages of Google is the presence of additional features. For example, this search engine allows users to view the content of some pages that have already been closed.
The following search engine, which we would like to dwell on, is Yahoo, which has a developed hierarchical classification, but at the same time belongs to the class of simple traditional systems with limited search capabilities. The most widespread this system is most widely spread in the USA. There is a hierarchical classifier and a keyword search, and to reduce the search range, there is the ability to search within the current subtopic of the classifier.
The most widespread search system in the Russian segment of the Internet is Yandex. Yandex search allows one to search on Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Romanian, English, German and French, taking into account the Russian and English morphology and closeness of words in a sentence. In addition to HTML-formatted web pages, Yandex indexes documents in PDF (Adobe Acrobat), Rich Text Format (RTF), binary formats like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, SWF (Macromedia Flash) and RSS (blogs and forums).
Another search engine is Lycos. It is an English-language portal based on a search system and rubricator of internet resources (rubricator is a hierarchic classification dictionary of rubrics, designed for forming reference and information collection, compiling information publications and for information search). This portal has links to localized versions of the catalogue in different countries worldwide. Like most systems, Lycos allows a simple query and a more sophisticated search method, based on the application of an advanced query form, designed for sophisticated users who have already learned how to work with this mechanism.
We have considered the search engines widely used in the global educational space. Note that there are quite a few search engines. Most of them provide relevant links, which greatly help search for information. As for education, nowadays a rare schoolboy, student, a postgraduate student goes to the library and tries to find the information he needs in books, magazines.
Whereas the Internet used to be more for entertainment, If previously the Internet was more for entertainment, now it publishes scientific, technical and artistic information. And rightly so. But why take so much effort to go somewhere when it is enough to have a laptop at hand and access to the Internet? And then the search engine will do everything for you.
Depending on their use in various fields of education, Internet resources (IRs) can be divided into those intended for distance and full-time education; portals for consulting purposes; IRs, dedicated to research activities; portals of reference character of educational topics; portals of virtual methodological associations; IRs of educational institutions; and informational Internet projects; IRs of mixed type.