Search Engines and Algorithms: Search Engine Algorithms Explored - Why are Search Engines so Different?
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Why are Search Engines so different?
Search engine algorithms are highly secret, competitive things. No one knows exactly what each search engine weighs and what importance it attaches to each factor in the formula, which leads to a lot of assumption, speculation, and guesswork. Each search engine employs its own filters to remove spam, and even have their own differing guidelines in determining what web spam is!
Search engines generally implement two or three major updates every year. One simply has to follow the patent filings to know this. Even if you are not interested in the patent itself, they may give you a heads up to possible changes that will be following in a search engine algorithm.
Another reason that search engines are so diverse is the widespread use of technology filters to sort out web spam. Some search engines change their algorithms to include certain filters, while others don’t change the basic algorithms, yet implement filters on top of the basic calculations. According to the dictionary, filters are essentially “higher-order functions that take a predicate and a list and returns those elements of the list for which the predicate is true.” A simpler way to think of search engine filters are like you would think of a water purifier: the water passes through a device made of porous material that removes unwanted impurities. A search engine filter also seeks to remove unwanted “impurities” from its results.
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