What is a Search Engine

1. What is a Search Engine

2. Widescreen Presentation Proteus, Keeper of Knowledge. Proteus is synonymous with change and success.

3. What is Proteus • Proteus is one among the free open source script targeting the open source community. • It is a meta search engine script which is a free, versatile, robust and highly customizable open source script. • It has inbuilt modules including web, images, news, videos, etc. • bookmarking, site directory, star rating review, word filter, file format support, etc. • This Meta search engine script pulls its data from search industry giants such as Google, Yahoo and Entire web via API.

4. What is a Meta Search Engine? • The search engine visits billions of websites and creates a database or repository of sorts of the various sites. This is known as the index. • Then whenever a user enters the search query, something magical happens (algorithms if you are a computer geek) and the pages that are deemed relevant to what you asked for are returned

5. Why will the same search on different search engines produce different results? • Because not all indices are going to be exactly the same. It depends on what the spiders find or what the humans submitted. • But more important, not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices. The algorithm is what the search engines use to determine the relevance of the information in the index to what the user is searching for.

6. Example Of Meta Search Engines

7. www.thrall.org/proteus.html Thrall Public Library District of Middletown & Wallkill 11-19 Depot Street, Middletown, New York 10940

8. All-in-one search pages provide quick access to many search engines either with simple links or via search boxes • Once the search words (separated by a space and no commas), or word strings (which need to be in quotation) are placed in the search window, a choice of 24 search engines and 5 metasearch engines are then available for a search. • Each one, however, has different properties, and varying results may be explored so that, for one's purposes, the best search engines become known and more commonly used. When a search has been done on one search engine, the back button (one alternative being the "go" function on Netscape or Mozilla Browsers, and clicking on "Proteus") is used to return to the Proteus Search Platform, thus permitting the selection of another search engine. • The search words remain in the search window and need not to be retyped as is the case when accessing search engines separately - without using such a platform.

9. The Middletown Thrall Library

10. Conclusion One of the better platforms available for Internet searching is Proteus Search located at the Middletown Thrall Library - http://www.thrall.org/proteus.html . Search engines such as Proteus provide interfaces that allow external applications to issue Web search queries. This Power Point presents a summarized guided meta-search engine, called “Proteus”. It guides and allows the user to view the search results with different perspectives. This is achieved through simple manipulation and automation of the existing functions. The Thrall Library meta-search engine supports search based on “combinatorial keywords” and “search by hosts”. The capability of Proteus cluster architecture through its programmable Web services creates advanced search features at a third party user application level.