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Search engine: A
program that searches documents for specified keywords and
returns a list of the documents where the keywords were
found.
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Boolean search: A
search allowing the inclusion or exclusion of documents
containing certain words through the use of operators such
as AND, NOT and OR.
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Index: The searchable
catalog of documents created by search engine software.
Index is often used as a synonym for search engine. Index is
commonly pluralized as "indices." However, Search Engine
Watch instead uses the alternative plural form "indexes."
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Phrase search: A search
for documents containing a exact sentence or phrase
specified by a user.
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Precision: The degree
in which a search engine lists documents matching a query.
The more matching documents that are listed, the higher the
precision. For example, if a search engine lists 80
documents found to match a query but only 20 of them contain
the search words, then the precision would be 25%.
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Proximity search: A
search where users to specify that documents returned should
have the words near each other.
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Relevancy: How well a
document provides the information a user is looking for, as
measured by the user.
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Spider: The software
that scans documents and adds them to an index by following
links. Spider is often used as a synonym for search engine.
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Stemming: The ability
for a search to include the "stem" of words. For example,
stemming allows a user to enter "swimming" and get back
results also for the stem word "swim." Stop words:
Conjunctions, prepositions and articles and other words such
as AND, TO and A that appear often in documents yet alone
may contain little meaning.
