Web search engines have their origins in information retrieval systems. The data is obtained by the web crawler of the respective search engine, e.g. Googlebot. About a third of all searches on the Internet are related to people and their activities.
Search Behavior
Search queries can be categorized in a number of ways. This classification plays a role in online marketing and search engine optimization (search engine marketing).
- Navigation-oriented searches: In navigation queries, the user searches specifically for pages that he already knows or believes exists. The user’s need for information is satisfied once the site has been found.
- Information-driven searches: In the case of informational enquiries, the user searches for a large number of information on a specific topic. Upon receipt of the information, the search is over. Further work with the used pages is usually absent.
- Transactional searches (or commercial searches): In transactional requests, the user searches for websites with which he intends to work. These are, for example, internet shops, chats, etc.
- Search query before making a purchase: For example, the user is specifically looking for test reports or reviews for certain products, but is not yet looking for specific offers for a product.
- Action-oriented searches: The user signals through their search query that they want to do something .
Presentation of Results
The page on which the search results are displayed to the user (sometimes referred to as the Search engine results page, or SERP for short) is divided (often spatially) into the Natural Listings and the Sponsor Links in many web search engines. While the latter are only included in the search index for a fee, the former lists all websites corresponding to the search term. In addition to the actual search results, some providers show the user other keywords that match the search.
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In order to make it easier for the user to use the web search engines, results are sorted according to relevance (main article: search engine ranking), for which each search engine uses its own criteria, which are usually kept secret. These include:
- The basic importance of a document, as measured by the link structure, the quality of the referring documents, and the text contained in references.
- Frequency and position of the search terms in the respective document found.
- Scope and quality of the document.
- Classification and number of documents cited.
Problems
Web search engines are mostly operated internationally, thus providing users with results from servers located in other countries. Because different countries’ laws have different views on what content is allowed, search engine operators often come under pressure to exclude certain sites from their results. The regular download of the several billion documents that a search engine has in its index places great demands on the network resources (traffic) of the search engine operator.
By means of search engine spamming, some website operators try to outwit the ranking algorithm of the search engines in order to get a better ranking for certain search queries. This harms both the operators of the search engine and their customers, as the most relevant documents are no longer displayed first.
Especially with a people search engine, data protection is a sensitive issue. When a search for a name is started through a people search engine, the results of the search only concern data that is generally available. This data is accessible to the general public even without the search engine, without having to register with a service or similar. The people search engine itself does not hold any information of its own, but only provides access to it. Corrections or deletions must be made to the source of origin.
