Q21 – What is search engine? Give examples.

Discuss its features and working

(with examples).

ANS – A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information
stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are
commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information
and the amount of information which must be consulted, akin to other techniques for
managing information overload.

The most public, visible form of a search engine is a Web search engine which searches for
information on the World Wide Web.

Search engines provide an interface to a group of items that enables users to specify criteria
about an item of interest and have the engine find the matching items. The criteria are referred
to as a search query. In the case of text search engines, the search query is typically expressed
as a set of words that identify the desired concept that one or more documents may
contain. There are several styles of search query syntax that vary in strictness. It can also switch
names within the search engines from previous sites. Whereas some text search engines
require users to enter two or three words separated by white space, other search engines may
enable users to specify entire documents, pictures, sounds, and various forms of natural
language. Some search engines apply improvements to search queries to increase the likelihood
of providing a quality set of items through a process known as query expansion. Query
understanding methods can be used as standardize query language.

Index-based search engine

The list of items that meet the criteria specified by the query is typically sorted, or ranked.
Ranking items by relevance (from highest to lowest) reduces the time required to find the
desired information. Probabilistic search engines rank items based on measures
of similarity (between each item and the query, typically on a scale of 1 to 0, 1 being most
similar) and sometimes popularity or authority (see Bibliometrics) or use relevance

79
feedback. Boolean search engines typically only return items which match exactly without
regard to order, although the term boolean search engine may simply refer to the use of
boolean-style syntax (the use of operators AND, OR, NOT, and XOR) in a probabilistic context.

To provide a set of matching items that are sorted according to some criteria quickly, a search
engine will typically collect metadata about the group of items under consideration beforehand
through a process referred to as indexing. The index typically requires a smaller amount
of computer storage, which is why some search engines only store the indexed information and
not the full content of each item, and instead provide a method of navigating to the items in
the search engine result page. Alternatively, the search engine may store a copy of each item in
a cache so that users can see the state of the item at the time it was indexed or for archive
purposes or to make repetitive processes work more efficiently and quickly.

 Features of Search Engine -

1. Focus on technological performance

Search engines, like Google and Bing, can accurately estimate your website speed.Therefore,
the performance of your website is crucial to how well you feature among search engines,
especially when you take into account that 40% of people abandon a website that takes more
than 3 seconds to load! And believe it or not, the average website takes 7.25 seconds to load.

Another way to ensure high technical performance is to ensure that your site architecture is
well structured with strong internal links. Search engines ultimately want to rank websites in
order of how topically apt they are, by internally linking to different pages within your own site
you are vouching for the strength of your website.

2. Create high-quality content

Search engines are becoming stricter and stricter on what they consider to be ‘high-quality’
content. These days it means text that is rich, topical, and clearly written by a human – not a
robot! The content also has to be in context and relevant to your website. Content that is text
heavy and updated regularly definitely ranks higher than sporadic, short pieces. However,
multimedia content is also a key feature that search engines approve. As we all know, pictures
are worth a thousand words, and videos are worth a million — include these within your
content to ensure higher search ranking.

3. Place keywords carefully

Keywords can make or break your ranking among search engines. Here at Keyword Eye, we
know that keywords must be dealt with strategically — your keyword density has to be just
right. Keyword features that search engines prefer are: titles that begin with the keyword, the

80
keyword being the most-used word in a content piece, and keywords featuring in the
description and title tags. Check out our features page to see how you can find more unique
keywords and analyze on-site content trends to ensure high ranks amongst search engines.

4. Make yourself trustworthy

It’s just as important to let search engines know how trustworthy you are, as it is to let your
users know. To improve your trust you can implement pages like Privacy Certification, Terms of
Business, and even a ‘Contact’ page. The Google Quality Document states that they prefer sites
with an “appropriate amount of contact information”.

Another feature that will improve your ranking and site trust is linking to sites that are already
highly-trusted, of a high-quality, or have a clear relevance to your site. It’s important to filter
through and check the sites that you are linking to as some estimate as much as 60% of the
web’s pages to be spam.

5. Think of your user

It’s been rumoured that search engines have begun measuring user signals as a ranking feature.
To ensure that your site reflects on search engines as one that users visit often or frequently
interact with you need to make your site easy for your user to…well, use!

Navigation is a key factor for users. Studies show that 40% of users will not return to a site if
their first visit was a negative experience. Page layouts that users prefer use breadcrumb
navigation, and are displayed in a way that makes the main content instantly visible. Bullet-
pointed lists can also make your site more user-friendly, as it breaks up the content in a way
that is easier to digest.

81
Q22 – Discuss the concept of World Wide Web in detail along with its features
and working.

ANS – The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system where
documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs, such
as https://www.example.com/), which may be interlinked by hypertext, and are accessible over
the Internet. The resources of the WWW may be accessed by users by a software application called
a web browser.

English scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. He wrote the first web browser
in 1990 while employed at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. The browser was released outside CERN in
1991, first to other research institutions starting in January 1991 and then to the general public in
August 1991. The World Wide Web has been central to the development of the Information Age and is
the primary tool billions of people use to interact on the Internet.

Web resources may be any type of downloaded media, but web pages are hypertext media that have
been formatted in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Such formatting allows for
embedded hyperlinks that contain URLs and permit users to navigate to other web resources. In
addition to text, web pages may contain references to images, video, audio, and software components
which are displayed rendered in the user's web browser as coherent pages of multimedia content.

Multiple web resources with a common theme, a common domain name, or both, make up a website.
Websites are stored in computers that are running a program called a web server that responds to
requests made over the Internet from web browsers running on a user's computer. Website content can
be largely provided by a publisher, or interactively where users contribute content or the content
depends upon the users or their actions. Websites may be provided for a myriad of informative,
entertainment, commercial, governmental, or non-governmental reasons.

82
  Features of World WideWeb –

 The amount of information available on the Internet has become so large that it is
difficult to search for specific information. The World Wide Web (WWW) makes
retrieval easy and quick.
 The WWW is a search tool that helps you find and retrieve information from a Web site
using links to other sites and documents. The WWW was built on the technology called
Hypertext. This technology increases accessibility to linked documents on the Internet
and helps user to navigate between documents very easily.
 Hypertext is identified by underlined text and a different color usually. Some places will
refer to this types of technique as Jump-Off Points. Hypertext can make links within the
same document or to other documents.
 Each time you access a new document by choosing a link, there is a connection made
with the web server that the document is on. Once the appropriate document is
retrieved the connection is broken. There is no point in maintaining the link while you
are viewing it. This is one reason why the WWW is so efficient.
 WWW lets you search, traverse, and use many types of information at numerous sites
and in multiple forms. This interface is called a browser. Some people refer to a browser
as a 'web browser' Often these terms are used interchangeably.
 The WWW is intended to help people share information resources, and services with
the widest possible community of users. Thus a user can access the WWW on Apple,
UNIX, Macintosh, DOS, Windows, and other operating systems.
 Just like the Internet, the WWW has a protocol, which is known as HyperText Transfer
Protocol (HTTP). HTTP acts as an interface between a Web Client Software, such
Netscape Navigator.
 A major advantage of the WWW is that it also supports TCP/IP services, such as Gopher,
FTP, and Archie in addition to HTTP.

 Working of World Wide Web –

The website is a collection of pages on the same system. World Wide Web is a collection of all
information and other resources that are connected by URLs and hyperlinks. By clicking those
links that redirect you to another web page or web site.

83
Q23 – Write short note on:

(a) Web browsers

(b) Merits of WWW

ANS – (a) Web Browsers –

A web browser is a software program that allows a user to locate, access, and display web
pages. In common usage, a web browser is usually shortened to "browser." Browsers are used
primarily for displaying and accessing websites on the internet, as well as other content created
using languages such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Extensible Markup Language
(XML).

Browsers translate web pages and websites delivered using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
into human-readable content. They also have the ability to display other protocols and prefixes,
such as secure HTTP (HTTPS), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), email handling (mailto:), and files
(file:).

In addition, most browsers also support external plug-ins required to display active content,
such as in-page video, audio and game content.

A variety of web browsers are available with different features, and are designed to run on
different operating systems. Common browsers include Internet Explorer from Microsoft,
Firefox from Mozilla, Google Chrome, Safari from Apple, and Opera. All major browsers have
mobile versions that are lightweight versions for accessing the web on mobile devices.

Web browsers date back to the late 1980s when an English scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, first
developed the ideas that led to the World Wide Web (WWW). This consisted of a series of
pages created using the HTML language and joined or linked together with pointers called
hyperlinks. Following this was the need for a program that could access and display the HTML
pages correctly – the browser.

A variety of web browsers are available with different features, and are designed to run on
different operating systems. Common browsers include Internet Explorer from Microsoft,
Firefox from Mozilla, Google Chrome, Safari from Apple, and Opera. All major browsers have
mobile versions that are lightweight versions for accessing the web on mobile devices.

84
Web browsers date back to the late 1980s when an English scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, first
developed the ideas that led to the World Wide Web (WWW). This consisted of a series of
pages created using the HTML language and joined or linked together with pointers called
hyperlinks. Following this was the need for a program that could access and display the HTML
pages correctly – the browser.

In 1993, a new browser known as Mosaic was developed, which soon gained widespread usage
due to its graphical-interface capability. Marc Andreesen, a member of the Mosaic
development team, left in 1994 to develop his own commercial browser based on Mosaic. He
called it Netscape Navigator, and it quickly captured over 90 percent of the nascent browser
market.

It soon faced stiff competition in 1995 from Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which was freely
bundled with Windows 95 (and later versions of Windows). It was pointless to buy Navigator
when Internet Explorer was free, and as a result, Navigator (and Netscape) were driven into the
ground.

But while Mosaic and Netscape are no longer around, the age of the browser was launched and
continues to this day, as more and more applications move to the web.

85
(b) Merits of WWW –

1. You can learn anything

2. Develop amazing stuff and become Billionaire (Google, Fb, Linkedin, Twitter etc)

3. Getting viral

4. Shopping

5. Movies

6. Help people

7. Social sites, Contacts, Video calls.

8. World wide news and 90% of general data is available online

9. Games

10. Porn (Limited)

11. Sports (Live)

12. Save Photos, Memories.

13. Showcase your hidden talents (Singing, Dancing, Short Films etc)

14. Hacking / Playing with tech stuff

15. Freelancing , Projects , Blogging, Ads etc

16. Online banking - No need to go to bank.

 Disadvantages

1. Too much distraction

2. Unlimited porn

3. Chatting (Youth wasting time)

4. Fake emails, spams etc

5. Becoming lazy

6. Getting addicted

86
Q24 - What is a newsgroup? Discuss its types and working with the help of an
example.

ANS - A newsgroup is a discussion about a particular subject consisting of notes written to a

central Internet site and redistributed through Usenet, a worldwide network of news discussion
groups. Usenet uses the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP).

Newsgroups are organized into subject hierarchies, with the first few letters of the newsgroup
name indicating the major subject category and sub-categories represented by a subtopic
name. Many subjects have multiple levels of subtopics. Some major subject categories are:
news, rec (recreation), soc (society), sci (science), comp (computers), and so forth (there are
many more). Users can post to existing newsgroups, respond to previous posts, and create new
newsgroups.

Newcomers to newsgroups are requested to learn basic Usenet netiquette and to get familiar
with a newsgroup before posting to it. A frequently-asked questions is provided. The rules can
be found when you start to enter the Usenet through your browser or an online service. You
can subscribe to the postings on a particular newsgroup.

Some newsgroups are moderated by a designated person who decides which postings to allow
or to remove. Most newsgroups are unmoderated.

87
  A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for
messages posted from many users in different locations using Internet. They
are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are
technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on the World
Wide Web. Newsreader software is used to read the content of newsgroups.

Before the adoption of the World Wide Web, Usenet newsgroups were among the most
popular Internet services, and have retained their noncommercial nature in contrast to the
increasingly ad-laden web. In recent years, this form of open discussion on the Internet has lost
considerable ground to individually-operated browser-accessible forums and big media social
networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

 Types of Newsgroup –
(a) Binary
While newsgroups were not created with the intention of distributing files such as pictures,
sound and video, they have proven to be quite effective for this. Because newsgroups are
widely distributed, a file uploaded once will be spread to many other servers and can then be
downloaded by an unlimited number of users. More useful is that users download from a local
news server, rather than from a more distant machine with perhaps limited connectivity, as
may be the case with peer-to-peer technology. In fact, this is another benefit of newsgroups: it
is usually not expected that users share. If every user makes uploads then the servers would be
flooded; thus it is acceptable and often encouraged for users to just leech.
There were originally a number of obstacles to the transfer of binary files over Usenet. Usenet
was originally designed with the transmission of text in mind, and so the encoding of posts
caused losses in binary data where the data was not part of the protocol's character set.
Consequently, for a long while, it was impossible to send binary data as such. As
workarounds, codecs such as Uuencode and later Base64 and yEnc were developed which
encoded the binary data from the files to be transmitted (e.g. sound or video files) to text
characters which would survive transmission over Usenet. At the receiver's end, the data
needed to be decoded by the user's news client.
(b) Moderated newsgroups
Most Newsgroups are not moderated. A moderated newsgroup has one or more individuals
who must approve posts before they are published. A separate address is used to submit posts
and the moderators then propagate those they approve of. The first moderated newsgroups
appeared in 1984 under mod.* according to RFC 2235, "Hobbes' Internet Timeline".

88
  Working -

Transmission within and at the bounds of the network uses the Network News Transfer
Protocol (NNTP) (Internet standard RFC 3977 of 2006, updating RFC 977 of 1986).

Newsgroup servers are hosted by various organizations and institutions. Most Internet service
providers host their own news servers, or rent access to one, for their subscribers. There are
also a number of companies who sell access to premium news servers.

Every host of a news server maintains agreements with other nearby news servers to
synchronize regularly. In this way news servers form a redundant network. When a user posts
to one news server, the post is stored locally. That server then shares posts with the servers
that are connected to it for those newsgroups they both carry. Those servers do likewise,
propagating the posts through the network.

89