Search Engine

Typically a software application which supports searching of a collection of semi-structured documents. These could be:

• on your local desktop (Devon Think, Zoot, SixDegrees)

• on a server within your company Intranet (Verity, Google appliance)

• on a single public website (Verity, used by MedScape)

• with a WebSpider, one could host a Vertical Search Engine indexing a set collection of external web sites (this is a project I wish we'd gotten to at MedScape).

• on a public search engine that indexes millions of websites (Google)

  • Altavista Vs Google

  • Jan'2007 - Charles S Knight list of 100 alternatives

There are some Open Source Search Engine-s

• Lucene for Java junkies (there's a PyLucene package/wrapper)

• http://www.nwc.com/1120/1120f1side3.html

• HtDig - http://www.htdig.org/ (built in C++)

• Xapian is used by Cite Base http://www.xapian.org/

  • Michael Salib explained that Xapian was prefered to Lucene because It easier to wrap into Python and provided faster queries and a better precision.

• MNoGoSearch (was Udm Search) - http://search.mnogo.ru/

• some plans on building one in Python.

People use Search Engine Optimization/SEO services/practices to improve the ranking of their pages in public Search Engines.