Uploaded October 2016 | Updated September 2026, 10 minutes ago
Today search is a fundamental part of the internet. All of the content on the web wouldn’t be very useful if you couldn’t find anything. Search is also a fascinating story. It requires tens or hundreds of thousands of machines that must work together and perform well despite constant failures and disruptions. It requires clever and novel algorithms to find, index, and rank everything, while withstanding attempts to manipulate search results. It requires understanding web page content and estimating the significanceof a particular page to a search user. Search also touches on issues of fairness, reputation, spam, and online permanence. All of this comes together everything time you search online—and it all works remarkably well.
Credits: Talking: Geoffrey Challen (Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo). Producing: Greg Bunyea (Undergraduate, Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo).
Part of the internet-class.org online internet course. A blue Systems Research Group (https://blue.cse.buffalo.edu) production.
Today search is a fundamental part of the internet. All of the content on the web wouldn’t be very useful if you couldn’t find anything. Search is also a fascinating story. It requires tens or hundreds of thousands of machines that must work together and perform well despite constant failures and disruptions. It requires clever and novel algorithms to find, index, and rank everything, while withstanding attempts to manipulate search results. It requires understanding web page content and estimating the significanceof a particular page to a search user. Search also touches on issues of fairness, reputation, spam, and online permanence. All of this comes together everything time you search online—and it all works remarkably well.
Credits: Talking: Geoffrey Challen (Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo). Producing: Greg Bunyea (Undergraduate, Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo).
Part of the internet-class.org online internet course. A blue Systems Research Group (https://blue.cse.buffalo.edu) production.
