Select a search query term or phrase, a product you plan to purchase, or some ar

Question

Select a search query term or phrase, a product you plan to purchase, or some area of personal interest. Use the query at each of the following search engines:

a. Google.com

b. Bing.com

c. Yahoo.com

d. Hakia.com

For each site, make the following observations:

a. How relevant or useful are the websites listed on the first two pages of search results?

b. What differences do you observe in terms of how the search engines list websites on the search results page?

c. Do you see any indication that the search engine is using semantic technology to generate results?

Explanation / Answer

(a) Google Inc. is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products. These includeonline advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, and software. Most of its profits are derived from Ad Words, an online advertising service that places advertising near the list of search results.Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University. Together they own about 14 percent of its shares but control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through super voting stock. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. Its mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," and its unofficial slogan was "Don't be evil". In 2004, Google moved to its new headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googolplex. In August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its interests as a holding company called Alphabet Inc. When this restructuring took place on October 2, 2015, Google became Alphabet's leading subsidiary, as well as the parent for Google's Internet interests.

(b) Bing is a web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. The service has its origins in Microsoft's previous search engines: MSN Search, Windows Live Search and later Live Search. Bing provides a variety of search services, including web, video, image and map search products. It uses the ASP.NET programming language and follows the design principles of Microsoft's "Metro" design language.Bing, Microsoft's replacement for Live Search, was unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on May 28, 2009, at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego, California, for release on June 1, 2009. Notable new features at the time included the listing of search suggestions while queries are entered and a list of related searches (called "Explore pane") based on semantic technology from Power set,which Microsoft had acquired in 2008.In July 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search. All Yahoo! Search global customers and partners made the transition by early 2012.The deal was altered in 2015, meaning Yahoo! was only required to use Bing for a "majority" of searches.In October 2011, Microsoft stated that they were working on new back-end search infrastructure with the goal of delivering faster and slightly more relevant search results for users. Known as "Tiger", the new index-serving technology had been incorporated into Bing globally since August that year. In May 2012, Microsoft announced another redesign of its search engine that includes "Sidebar", a social feature that searches users' social networks for information relevant to the search query.

© Yahoo! is an Internet portal that incorporates a search engine and a directory of World Wide Web sites organized in a hierarchy of topic categories. As a directory, it provides both new and seasoned Web users the reassurance of a structured view of hundreds of thousands of Web sites and millions of Web pages. It also provides one of the best ways to search the Web for a given topic. Since Yahoo is associated with the most popular Web search sites, if a search argument doesn't lead to a Yahoo topic page, it will still lead to results from the six or seven popular search engine sites Yahoo links to.Yahoo began as the bookmark list Stanford University graduate students, David Filo and Jerry Yang. After putting their combined bookmark lists organized by categories on a college site, the list began to grow into an Internet phenomenon. It became the first such directory with a large following. Filo and Yang postponed their graduate work and became part of a public offering for a multimillion dollar corporation. As of October, 2005, Yahoo was serving approximately 3.4 billion page views worldwide.

(d) The Haka (plural is the same as singular: haka) is a traditional ancestral war cry, dance, or challenge from the Mori people of New Zealand. It is a posture dance performed by a group, with vigorous movements and stamping of the feet with rhythmically shouted accompaniment.War hake were originally performed by warriors before a battle, proclaiming their strength and prowess in order to intimidate the opposition, but haka are also performed for various reasons: for welcoming distinguished guests, or to acknowledge great achievements, occasions or funerals, and kapa haka performance groups are very common in schools.The New Zealand sports teams' practice of performing a haka before their international matches has made the haka more widely known around the world. This tradition began with the 1888–89 New Zealand Native football team tour and has been carried on by the New Zealand rugby team since 1905.

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