Effect of Indian search engines uses on retrieval and precision of information from Internet

Abstract

In today’s society, Internet is the excellent source of information for every individual and the World Wide Web, an ‘embodiment of human knowledge’ (World Wide Web Consortium, 2010), or ‘a pool of human knowledge’ as described by father of Web, Tim Berner Lee (Berner Lee et al., 1994), makes it more useful for all purposes. The interlinked comprehensive databases having information on different magnitude like media, marketing, entertainment, advertisement, etc. (Shafi & Rather, 2005), increases the usefulness of Web to any height. The World Wide Web, WWW, W3, or simple Web is most popular, extensive and the fastest communication medium in Internet. Today, the explosive growth of the Internet has rendered the Web as the primary tool for information retrieval. This technology in combination with latest electronic storage devices enables us to keep track of enormous amount of information available to the information society (Schlichting & Nilsen, 1996). The public information stored in the multitude of computer networks connected to the Internet forms a huge electronic library, but the enormous quantity of data and number of linked computer networks also make it difficult to find where the desired information resides and then to retrieve it. Various Web search aids have been developed in order to provide users with an interface that enables them to locate documents containing information that matches their interests. Web search aids are variously referred to as catalogs, directories, indexes, search engines, or Web databases. In less than ten years, it has grown from an esoteric system for use by a small community of researchers to the de-facto method of obtaining information for millions of individuals, many of whom have never encountered, and also have no interest in the issues of retrieving information from databases (Oppenheiem et al., 2000).