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A search engine or search service is a program designed to help finding information stored on a computer system such as the WWW (web search engines), inside a corporate or proprietary network or a personal computer (desktop search). Web search engines allow you to ask for web resources (e.g. web pages, documents, images) meeting specific criteria (typically those containing a given word or phrase) and retrieve a list of references that match those criteria.
There are different types of web search engines, for example:
Index search engines:
Index search engines do not sort web pages or evaluate them according to their contents and collect also the "junk". Though, they are considered one of the most important type of search engines for translators because the scope of their databases is very large and they contain more information than directories.
Some examples are: AltaVista, Google, Lycos, MSN Search, Yahoo! Search
Directory search engines:
When search engines search in directories, they look at the descriptions of documents that generally are created using semi-automatic indexing. These search engines are helpful if you are looking for specific information e.g. information on a CNC turning centre in a particular subject field such as machinery.
Some examples of directories are: Google Directory Search, Yahoo! Directory Search, About.com, etc.
Meta-searchers:
Special search engines that send their queries simultaneously to other search engines, and combine and display all results in one page. They can be useful because they search within a large amount of data and can combine different search parameters for one query. Though they are fast, they generally do not allow refining the results and do not allow using all the features of individual search engines (such as operators, symbols, phrases, etc.).
Some examples are: Metacrawler, InferenceFind, Ixquick, and Metor
Specialized database search engines:
Perfect when looking for specific information; these databases are generally built manually from content not available on the Web.
Some examples are: CiteSeer, LawCrawler, Edgar, Medline, and IATE.
Search procedures can last few seconds or longer depending on the search engine used. Normally, the results are displayed by the search engine in form of a list of references (hyperlinks) to the relevant documents containing the searched terms. These references include the title and a two- or three-line abstract of the document. The results are organized logically, usually according to relevance, frequency, etc.
Why is this information important for translators and translation teachers?
Knowing what search engines are, their differences and how to use them is vital for translators and translation teachers since the Internet is one of the most important and used information sources for translators. Translation professionals and translation teachers turn to the Internet to find terminology that in many cases is not available in printed dictionaries, as well as to find general historical or up-to-date data not easy to find in other sources — and all this within seconds.