Search Systems
1. What are some of the reasons that might warrant the need to use a search system on a website?
2. What is a search zone? What are the approaches for creating search zones?
3. Explain the difference between recall and precision in terms of search results. Consider the following search engines:
a. Search engine A retrieves 600 documents out of a total of 8,200 documents. Out of the 600 documents retrieved, only 500 are relevant out of a total of 923 relevant documents. Calculate the recall and precision rates for the query.
b. Search engine B retrieves 131 documents out of a total of 8,200 documents. Out of the 131 documents retrieved, all 131 are relevant out of a total of 923 relevant documents. Calculate the recall and precision rates for the query.
c. Search engine C retrieves 700 documents out of a total of 8,200 documents. Out of the 700 documents retrieved, 0 are relevant out of a total of 923 relevant documents. Calculate the recall and precision rates for the query.
d. Search engine D retrieves 5,000 documents out of a total of 8,200 documents. Out of the 5,000 documents retrieved, 923 are relevant out of a total of 923 relevant documents. Calculate the recall and precision rates for the query.
4. What is the purpose of a stemming tool? Explain the difference between strong and weak stemming. Provide examples of strong and weak stemming.
5. What are two main issues to consider when displaying the results of a search? How many documents should you display in a search result?
6. Describe some approaches for sorting and ranking search results for display.
7. When sorting search results alphabetically, why is it a good idea to omit articles such as “a” and “the”?
8. How does “best bets” ranking operate?
9. What are four key factors to consider when designing a search system interface?
10. What are some of the ways search system designers can help a user when no results are returned for a query?
Search Engine Architecture
1. Describe how Google’s PageRank algorithm operates.
2. What is SERP?
3. Describe the main Boolean operators used in search engine queries.
4. What is meant by the terms Deep and Surface Web? How might documents end up in the Deep Web?
5. What are the two primary goals when designing a search engine’s architecture?
6. What is the purpose of a web crawler?
7. What is the purpose of a web feed in terms of a search engine?
Xavier Huang 