Background
1. The Basics of Web Search
Since the late 60s, when the first data exchange across a new network occurred between computers at UCLA and Stanford, the sharing of information between computers has greatly evolved. By 1990, the World Wide Web provided a common network platform for content to be easily stored, shared, and retrieved without users having to understand the underlying protocols that make it possible. The ease with which information could be distributed was the primary factor that propelled the Web to its popularity throughout the following decade. The particular element that facilitates the easy retrieval of Web documents is hypertext (links).
During 1994, sophisticated Web search engines emerged. Web search engines quickly proved to be extremely useful to researchers and also quickly grabbed the attention of Web surfers at home. Two successful models of Web search have developed to date namely directory-based and spider-based. The difference between them centers upon how Web sites are retrieved and recorded. Neither type of Web search performs a real-time query across the Internet at the moment of use, (that is entirely impractical), though user experience reinforces this common misconception. Instead, Web sites are recorded into a locally held database and at the moment of use, the database is referenced for results. Search results are displayed with some sort of informative page abstraction and hypertext refers the searcher to documents at the places of their origin on the Web.
It's as if, when queried, a Web search engine replies, "Thanks for your input. I've seen a bunch of Web pages that contain the words you are asking about. Here is a list of them in order of importance, (importance according to me, anyway), with hypertext so that you can visit them directly - enjoy!"
The two basic approaches to Web search developed different solutions to provide a good search experience. Search engines faced the difficulties of recording information from a Web that was becoming tremendously vast and experiencing an ever-increasing pace of growth. At the same time, older material might change or disappear from the Web and searchers could experience broken links or unqualified content. A good search experience begins with users finding what they want with as little trouble as possible. A search engine might not have anything relevant for a user in its database. If matches are found, the records might link to out-of-date or missing pages.