SearchEngineFan

Today I was alerted when browsing wordpress.org. I actually wanted to check out the latest WordPress plugins and developements when I recognized a button “HELP STOP SOPA/PIPA” together with a new blog post on this matter. SOPA stands euphemistically for “Stop Online Piracy Act”, PIPA for “Protect IP Act”. Both proposed acts are in my opinion attempts to regulate the online freedom of speach in a way, which seems even to me as a guy from Europe absolutely unamerican.

Still - the bills haven’t passed the Congress. You can find more information about it and calls to action at the site AmericanCensorship.org.

Well in fact, search engines are rather far from beeing simple. What makes them appear simple is clever engineering, market research and stunning amounts of technology. The core tasks of a web search engine are tough enough:

1. knowing what a user really is looking for
2. knowing which of the 10s of billions of web pages or services are most relevant
3. knowing how to distinguish web spam, porn or malicious services from regular services
4. making the gazillions of data accessible to all users asap / instantaniously

This blog will look into the engines and will try to explain them. How are they paying off commercially? What comes next? What is actually available (but nobody knows it)?

I hope you will enjoy this blog. Lots of fun!