Vocabulary Basics for Business [Electronic resources]

Barbara G. Cox

نسخه متنی -صفحه : 217/ 172

Search Engines

Search engines are an important tool for finding information on the Web.

MEMORANDUM
TO: Jim Prain, Web Site Assistant
FROM: Joan Kelly
Our new Web site for Joosey Juice is fabulous!
Unfortunately, I worry that no one will ever see it. 
This morning I checked the major Internet portal sites
serving our industry, and our site was not listed in any
of them. Then I searched for our products with logical
keywords, including "juice" and "fruit juice," using
Yahoo!, Google, Excite, and a few other search engines,
and again our site was not among the results.
Please register the URL of the main page of our Web
site with all major portals and search engines
immediately so that they will spider our pages as soon
as possible. How long will it take the robots and
spiders to spider our pages so that we show up in search
results?

WHAT DO YOU KNOW?

Circle the letter next to the answer that best completes the sentence. Use the context clues in the preceding memo to help you decide.

1	Spiders _______________. (a) travel the Internet to ruin Web pages (b) read Web pages and take information back to search engines (c) create links that hold the Web together (d) none of the above
A1:	(b). Spiders are automated programs that retrieve information from Web sites and send it back to the search engine or portal that sent them out.
2	Keywords _______________. (a) are entered into search engines or portals by users looking for information on the Internet (b) are the text on Web sites about locksmiths (c) are part of a domain name (d) none of the above
A2:	(b). Most portals and search engines have an area for visitors to enter keywords and then click a button to ask for a list of Web sites related to those words.
3	On the Internet, a portal is _______________. (a) a Web site about doors and gates (b) a hotel site (c) a site or page that users visit to look for information (d) none of the above
A3:	(c). A portal is a "gateway to the Internet."
4	Web site owners complete URL registrations so that _______________. (a) search engines will include them in their information given to users (b) the site is a legal entity (c) the URL cannot be spidered (d) none of the above
A4:	(a). Some search engines will find some sites without the site's URL or URLs being registered. However, URL registration helps assure that the site will be found and spidered and the information entered in the search engine's database.

TERMS RELATED TO SEARCH ENGINES

keywords words people enter into search engines to find information on the Web. Most search engines match words being searched for with Web pages that have them.

portal an Internet site offering a selection of resources and services, such as e-mail, links to popular Web sites, search engines, directories, shopping malls, promotions, chat rooms, free Web pages, etc. Many major search engines, such as Yahoo!, Excite, and Infoseek, are now portals.

search engine an Internet site, function, or program that maintains databases of Internet pages, their keywords, and their URLs, and retrieves the information according to keywords entered by users, displaying a list of Internet sites and/or pages. Examples include Excite, Infoseek, Google, and Webcrawler.

spider, robot a program that automatically retrieves Web page information for use by search engines. Some Web pages have hidden text telling spiders what to do, for example, "return every 7 days," or "do not catalog this page." To spider means to crawl through a Web site getting information. (Robots or spiders do spideringnot people.)

URL registration submission of a Web site's URL and sometimes a short description of the site to a search engine, directory, or portal so that the site will be listed in the directory and/or reported by the search engine.