Quiz Of The Week: Search Engines

Some people are considering other search engines, now that Google lets users ask for links to be erased thanks to the EU’s “right to be forgotten“. We think it’s time for a quiz that will remind you of search engines beyond Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Search engines came into existence after the World Wide Web began to grow too big for anyone to find their way around unaided. The first efforts used older Internet technology such as Archie and Gopher, based on archiving. It quickly became obvious that users needed a service which would automatically check for new pages and add them to an index – and the search engine was born.

Searching clever

Google got ahead with its clever “PageRank” technology that graded pages according to the links to them. And then capitalised on the commercial (advertising) opportunities this opened up.

Since then, new search engines have often claimed to fix some perceived weakness in Google’s efforts. Some claim to give users more privacy, some have a mission to combat “spam” and some attempt to provide something that understands your queries better – so-called “answer engines”.

And then there’s Bing: Microsoft’s answer to the question, “Why can’t we have a big search engine too?”

Over the last few years, we have seen a vast array of different approaches to the problem, and we’ve wrapped them up in quiz form, including some pretty, um, “searching” questions.

Ready to give it a try?

Try the Search Quiz!

And if you like it, we have plenty more!