Search Engines Evaluation

Answer all of the following questions. Send your answers to itgs.sass@gmail.com
PLEASE CHECK BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE ROOM THAT I HAVE RECEIVED YOUR EMAIL

1. 1- Explain in detail the underlying mechanism when a user types a URL and the corresponding page is returned to the user's computer. Why are there different protocols to be used on the Internet? Why are only certain ports open?
2. 2- Explain in detail how a search engine works, and how a search result is returned when a user enters a query.
3. 3- How does Google rank webpages for search results? What is most important in their algorithm?
4. 4- A friends of yours wants to launch a website for his new company, that sells specialized equipment for bicycles. He wants his company to appear at the top of the searches when cyclists look for accessories and gear. How would you make sure that his web page ranks high?
5. 5- If you were transported 20 years into the future, what features would be available in both computer based and cell-phone based search engines? Explain in detail how these innovations would work.
6. 6- How would you construct queries to find out about "advances in food technology will solve world hunger". How would you determine the validity of the sources?
7. 7- EXTRA CREDIT - Test your Search Engine ability!
   In one of the most memorable moments in Olympic history, an athlete stopped in a race to help fellow competitors who were in risk of drowning. In the Olympic games held 3 years before this athlete was born, another athlete was the first ever to win three athletic events with world records. The Olympic sport in which this person’s partner won a gold medal has been swept (meaning that 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place were won by athletes from the same country) twice by a country. This country’ s most famous Olympic hero won his or her maximum number of gold medals in a city where the Olympic Games were also held. How many athletes from Argentina participated in those games?
   
    

Recap for evaluation

During this first part of our course, we have studied search engines, their underlying mechanism, characteristics and some of the potential implications on individuals and society of their manipulation.
The topics that we have covered include:
• Basic knowledge of the Internet, servers and clients, protocols, data packets, IP, DNS.
• The nature of search engines,  indexing algorithms, what makes a search engine better than others.
• Validating sources.
• Privacy issues, privacy policies from search engines.
• A brief glimpse into the nature of search engine algorithms. Search Engine Optimization. Pagerank. Google bombing.
• How search engines can be manipulated and their potential effects on individuals and society.
• Mulltimedia Search Engines and the future of esrach engines.
• User constructed search engine queries.