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Full-text search engines provide a powerful set of tools to search and find resources on the open web. The open web is enormous and always changing but full-text search engines like Google sweep up great swaths of it. Google searches over four billion web pages!
Full-text search engines can be used to 'find needles in the haystack.' The text of billions of pages are included in a search, every word except for the most common words such as the, an, a, and.
Search engines like Google are built by computer programs called "web bots" or "bots." These programs crawl like spiders collecting information from every web page they find. Good and bad are added. No editor reviews the picks.
Results in Google are determined by relevance and popularity. Relevance is determined by matches in the text of a page to the words used in a search. Popularity is determined by the number of times other sites link to a page. Google was the first to sort its results using both relevance and popularity. Other full-text search engines have followed.
Advantages of Full-text Search Engines
- Searches large chunks of the Internet
- Pinpoints unique content, 'finds needles in a haystack'
- Full texts of pages are searched, words and phrases
Disadvantages
- No one search engine includes it all
- Web bots gather indiscriminately, good sites and bad
- Many dead links, many sites no longer available.
- Limited editorial oversight
