Difference in Google & Yahoo! search results

Internet is a huge database. Google and Yahoo as made our life easier by providing relevant search results for our queries.
Search engines gives the direction to the search. They collect the information, organize it and make it accessible as per your query.
So, what is it that makes one search engine better than other. Why does Google provides different search results than Yahoo for the same keywords and phrases. In other words, what are the various parameters that define relevance of a web page for a keyword and how are these parameters differ in different search engines.
Here is a list of some important parameters :

• Search engine class : Type of search engine make a difference in the search results. Some search engines are Crawler-Based search engines like Google & Yahoo , some are Human-Powered directories, such as open directory and some are Hybrid search engines, like MSN. Their different way of processing create the difference in the search results.
• Relevancy algorithm : Every search engine has its own unique relevancy algorithms ( The mathematical equation for sorting the results), which set the order of results for the search engine query.
• Paid inclusion programs : These programs makes the organic search results more commercial. In this service, the web owner need to pay a flat fee for placing their web page in the top ranking of search engine result pages. For example, Yahoo! has its own paid inclusion program.
• Time frame and age : Search engines have their own parameters of ranking the sites as per the time frame and age of the web site. Like, Google trust old sites than the new ones, however, you can find the new websites in the organic results of MSN Search.
• Crawl depth : It simply means how deeply search engines are moving through the web pages and how much weightage they are giving to the other factors like link quality etc. This is also an important factor for determining the rank of the websites. For example, Google's crawl depth determined not only by the link quantity but the link quality as well.
• Link authenticity & Content : Search engines follows different criterion of giving consideration to the link authenticity, content of the site etc. Like, Google is very much concerned for the link authenticity as compare to the MSN.
• Common words : Some search engines puts weightage to the common words, like, prepositions, articles etc. Google does not substantiate the common words that occur in the search query.
• Open directories : Every search engine takes the references from different (own defined) open directories. If your website is listed in these directories, it will increase the web page ranking in the relevant search engine.

In real sense, Google, Yahoo! and other search engines do things differently instead of doing different things. Everyone is unique in his/her way of working, similarly Google is different than yahoo though they are following many basic set of functioning. Like, everyone is using their own bots which crawl the web pages through hyperlinks, then they store these pages in to indexer by considering every page as a separate document. After getting all the relevant web pages they use their own relevancy algorithm for sorting out the relevant results in to descending order of their relevancy.

For more details checkout these links

http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167891

http://www.seobook.com/relevancy/

The Linux Equivalent Project

Are you scared to switch to linux because most of your favorite windows applications do not work with linux. Or have you already switched but are not able to find a good alternative to windows programs.
Check out The Linux Equivalent Project, this site provides some usable alteratives to most popular windows programs. Most of the software listed are free alternatives to commercial software, hence they may not be as powerful as the commercial windows software, but they are still worth a look.

First steps: Secure your PC

You have just installed Windows on your new PC. You take a broadband connection and connect to internet. How much time do you think you have before it gets affected by viruses, worms and spyware? It can be as less as 10 minutes.
Hence I always advise the first thing to do when you connect to internet is to first make the computer secure enough for general browsing. Just 2 small steps should be sufficient for most home users. First, install Mozilla Firefox. Second, install an antivirus.

Why use Firefox? Cause IE is insecure. Because you think you have been just surfing the web and nothing else, and you will never know when a spyware hit you (especially true if you do not have SP2 on your Windows XP) . Take my advice, install firefox and forget about IE. You will never need it again anyways.

Now for antivirus. Typically, home users do not install antivirus because the only 2 antivirus software they have ever heard of and have faith on are Norton and McAfee are too expensive to buy for a home computer (or too much effort to get pirated copies). Or because it slows down the computer. To overcome all these issues, go for freely available antiviruses such as AVG Antivirus Free Edition. It works pretty good for home users and takes less resources than commercial antiviruses. I have been using it for quite some time and am pretty satisfied with the results. Another alternative is Avast Home Edition, which is also quite popular and free but has a limitation of registering and re-registering every year (free of course).

The next steps to take would be to install an anti-spyware and a firewall. I'll take those up in the next post.

About the advisor

I always thought of Computers as great facilitators to making life easier. However, as I have seen and faced over past many years, most non-techy people find computers scary rather than a tool to ease their lives. Infact, Using computers and internet upto its full potential is difficult even for the techy people out there who would love to experiment.

Being a geek and a software engineer for many years now, I have always tried new ideas that can help day to day tasks or just make me look cool.

Hence I came up with this blog where I could share some of those ideas and also get similar ideas from people. I would also like to hear about various problems people face and try to suggest resolutions. In case I am out of ideas, I'll post the problem here so that other users can comment.

So guys/gals, if you are facing any problems that you think can be solved technically, write a comment or mail me at goel.shakti+tech@gmail.com