Category Kids Queries

No search engines do not search the entire internet. The Internet encompasses much more than just the World Wide Web, the linked pages people typically surf and the portion plumbed by search engines. File-sharing sites, corporate data banks, government “intranets,” workplace servers, and other private sites are strictly off-limits to public snooping. And then there’s the murky region known as “dark net.” Uncharted by search engines, it’s the Internet’s seedy underbelly, home to anonymous users and secret networks that want to stay that way.

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Each time you enter a word or phrase (say, “the five best desserts”) into a search engine, the following things happen behind the scenes in about one-eighth of a second:

Step 1 Search: The search engine uses algorithms (mathematical formulas) to determine exactly what you’re hunting for, adding in synonyms (“tastiest treats”), anticipating your terms before you’ve even finished typing, and offering corrections in case you’ve made a mistake (did you mean “best deserts” instead of “best deserts”?).

Step 2 Sort: Your request is sent to the search engine’s servers. Here, the company that owns the search engine maintains a massive index of all the words, photos, videos, songs, and other data strewn across the World Wide Web. This information – enough to fill hundreds of millions of gigabytes – is continuously collected and updated by programs called “spiders” that crawl across the Web and sift through its information.

Step 3 Collect: From its index, the search engine gathers every Web page with content that matches your search term. Results are filtered based on hundreds of factors, including the pages’ age, the number of people who’ve visited the pages, their estimated reliability, and more.

Step 4 Voila! : The results are ranked as links in your Web browser, with the most relevant Web pages at the top of the list.

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HTTP, which stands for “hypertext transfer protocol,” is the language of rules that controls how your browser navigates the network of linked pages known as the World Wide Web (which is where the “www” comes from). When you enter a website name into your browser’s address bar (or click on a link within a page), protocols contact the site’s hosting server and  fetch the requested Web Page, which then pops up on your computer screen. Many countries – such as Iran, the People’s Republic of China, Syria, and North Korea – block or filter access to the Internet or punish citizens who post information that’s deemed critical to the government.

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Nobody – not a single person, company, or government. The Internet is a network of millions of interconnected computers and servers spread across the globe. A nonprofit international group called the Internet Society does watch over the global network, establishing protocols (a system of rules for sharing data) and promoting its evolution and access to everybody.

Thousands of people and organizations own the Internet. The Internet consists of lots of different bits and pieces, each of which has an owner. Some of these owners can control the quality and level of access you have to the Internet. They might not own the entire system, but they can impact your Internet experience.

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The strands of today’s Internet stretch back to the early 1960s, when computer scientists began brainstorming a system for researchers, educators, and government agencies to share information through their computers. Officials in the United States government saw the value of a network of linked computers that would continue to operate even if bits of it were blasted in a war. The U.S. Department of Defense funded research into an early network known as the ARPANET, which, over time and through many upgrades, evolved into the modern Internet and the World Wide Web (the system of linked pages that most people browse on the Internet). What started as a link between four computers has grown into a network of at least 75 million servers.

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The largest man-made structure at the time of its completion in the 17th century, China’s Great Wall spans 5,500 miles (8,850 km) across northern China, from the Korean border west into the Gobi desert. It actually started out as a series of smaller walls built by Chinese warlords in the seventh century B.C. to defend their individual lands. As China became a united empire, the walls were joined and fortified over the next 2,000 years to repel enemies, particularly the Mongolian and Manchu armies. Built from countless bricks and stones and guarded by watchtowers, the Great Wall is an engineering marvel of the ancient world. You can’t spot the Great Wall from Earth orbit with the naked eye (the wall tends to blend in with the mountainous landscape). Astronauts can see all sorts of other man-made objects – roads, cities, dams, and even the Great Pyramids – from their spaceship portholes.

Picture Credit : Google