View the development of search engines from Google Toolbar 4.0 Beta

A very important reason for the huge development of web is the simplicity and ease of use of HTML. simple HTML allows anyone to efficiently publish information. However, the published information must be searched or indexed for use by others. Yahoo's development and emergence benefit from its webpage directory, however, the rapid increase in the amount of information makes Web cataloguing almost impossible (currently, only Google can search for more than 8 billion web pages), so the search engine becomes more and more important.

The basic principle of the current search engine is the full-text search of HTML text with no semantic structure. From Yahoo to Google, there is no essential improvement. An important issue of this search engine is that most of the results in the search results are not needed by the user. The essential reason is that apart from the meaning of the text, no background knowledge or specific meaning. Therefore, academia and the industry have proposed the concept of Semantic Web (Semantic Web). Simply put, it is to expand the existing web so that Web pages are not only a means for information expression, but can also be self-described, with semantics, and better search http://del.icio.us and interoperability.

From an academic point of view, a web that can accurately and effectively search and reason should be a semantic web, that is, a structured and meaningful web. But from a realistic perspective, currently, billions of pages cannot be deleted or rebuilt. Therefore, a feasible method is to wrap existing information and add semantic descriptions to existing information, that is, metadata, such as tags or annotation ).

Search history (including tags) bookmarks add annotations to web pages, and add annotations to information, as an important means of knowledge expression, interoperability, and reasoning, as well as an important means and method to improve the effectiveness and accuracy of Web search, it is one of the cutting-edge directions of Semantic Web (Semantic Web) research. For researchers, how to add annotations to huge web resources is a real problem, such as automated tools. for Google, Google uses its huge user base to search for history and bookmarks, it is the best and most economical way to complete such a job. Therefore, while providing services for Google for free, all users are working for Google for free.

By searching for history, Google can understand users' background knowledge. By using bookmarks, Google can add tags to a huge web site to learn their background knowledge and specific meanings, to provide users with better search services.

From this point of view, Yahoo acquired del from Google Toolbar's bookmarks service. icio. as you can understand, what you need to do is to provide better search results, rather than simply providing the bookmarking service.

Note: My personal research focuses on spatial databases and interoperability. If you have any questions about the Semantic Web and its search engine, please do not hesitate to advise on the errors.