PlanoTse Handbook for Job Search Automation/What is web search?


 * Chapter 1

What is web search?
The networking infrastructure that globally connects millions of computers together and thus forms a massive network of networks is called the Internet. Data traveling over the Internet is arranged according to one of the format standards, which together are called protocols. File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) are three examples.

Hypertext is on-screen text that can include reader-selectable references (hyperlinks) to other text. Some of the referenced text might be physically located on the other side of the planet. The reader can use a mouse, a keyboard or even their own finger to select one of the activated references and immediately see the content of the referenced text, regardless whether the original text is still there.

The entire collection of all interlinked hypertext documents located around the planet is called the Web, also known as the World Wide Web (WWW). One page in a hypertext document is thus called a webpage. Information about the location of this webpage is called a web address, also known as a uniform resource locator (URL). URL by the way is just part of a uniform resource identifier (URI) but URL is often used verbally as a synonym for URI.

How a hyperlink and other information on a webpage should be rendered is either explicitly or implicitly spelled out by the author in HyperText Markup Language (HTML).


 * This is normal text without markups.
 * This is &lt;span style="color:red;">unprocessed hypertext&lt;/span> using HTML.
 * This is processed hypertext using HTML.

The application software, also known as an application or an “app”, that can use HTTP to retrieve a webpage from the Web and present it to the reader according to the author’s wish, which is often expressed in HTML, is called a web browser.

Web search is the act of looking for webpages. The system that collects webpages together at one place in order to to enable faster web search is called a web search engine. When you ask a web search engine such as Google or Bing find webpages related to a topic, you will get back a list of hyperlinks to prospective webpages. This list may have a hundred or more links. They are often divided up into a number of search engine results pages (SERPs). From a SERP, you decide which link you should try and see if its referenced page had what you’re looking for.