The Rapid Growth of the Internet

Abstract

Human memory and Internet search engines face a shared computational problem, needing to retrieve stored pieces of information in response to a query. We explored whether they employ similar solutions, testing whether we could predict human performance on a fluency task using Page Rank, a component of the Google search engine. In this task, people were shown a letter of the alphabet and asked to name the first word beginning with that letter that came to mind.

We show that Page Rank, computed on a semantic network constructed from word association data, outperformed word frequency and the number of words for which a word is named as an associate as a predictor of the words that people produced in this task. We identify two simple process models that could support this apparent correspondence between human memory and Internet search, and relate our results to previous rational models of memory.

It is known that users of internet search engines often enter queries with misspellings in one or more search terms. Several web search engines make suggestions for correcting misspelled words, but the methods used are proprietary and unpublished to our knowledge. Here we describe the methodology we have developed to perform spelling correction for the PubMed search engine. Our approach is based on the noisy channel model for spelling correction and makes use of statistics harvested from user logs to estimate the probabilities of different types of edits that lead to misspellings. The unique problems encountered in correcting search engine queries are discussed and our solutions are outlined.

Thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet search engine search box, users have come to depend on search engines both to find and refind information. However, re-finding behaviour has not been significantly addressed. Here we look at re-finding queries issued to the Yahoo! search engine by 114 users over a year.

Introduction

Internet itself acts as an organisation because it provide the interconnectivity between different computer organisation and also provide the network through which these organisation can link with each other. The rapid growth of the Internet and the Web is characterised by both digital information revolution and explosion. The digital information revolution and explosion manifest in the ever increasing quantities and array of new electronic information resources provided by computer networks and the Internet, including web’ pages, newsgroups, mailing lists, electronic archives, networked databases, software applications and business services.

A number of studies of search engine queries have observed a high misspelling rate (Nordlie, 1999; Spink et al., 2001; Wang et al., 2003). Wang et al. (2003) report a misspelling rate of 26% for words on an academic site. It seems possible that the misspelling rate on a public site could be even higher. Nordlie (1999) observes that two thirds of initial requests are unsuccessful in meeting their objective and an NPD survey (2000) finds that 77% of the time an initially unsuccessful search is modified and tried again on the same site. These findings suggest the potential benefit of performing some kind of query correction for the user. Spelling correction is an obvious candidate for this role. We therefore undertook to study how such a facility could be constructed for the PubMed search engine.

Problem Statement

Nowadays this is very clear that the concept of the ‘information literacy’ can implement in terms of “a set of competencies that an informed citizen of an information society ought to possess to participate intelligently and actively in that society “(Shapiro and Hughes, 1996, p.1). In this digital world each and everyone including teachers, student and researchers in particular wants to develop there skills in ‘information literacy’.

Due to increase in the alternative digital sources the work in home, in school and college becomes more challenging. this increment in digital revolution person’s relative efficiency in performing the tasks compared to others to depend on his/her comparative abilities to exploit newer information sources constantly being provided by the revolution. In this digital age it is not surprising that the capability of individuals to use computer systems and the Internet to communicate search for and apply information from different information sources to solve problems.

In most developed countries, the implementation of educational curricula to develop and improve computing and Internet search skills for problem solving in both teachers and students is already ingrained in school and college life, as confirmed for the United States by the Pew Internet & American Life Project (2002). College students in U.S were heavier users of the Internet compared to the general population, because each and every is learning computer from his/her childhood so, they are very comfortable with it and it become there daily routine. Let have a look on the developing countries which are presently in that positioned opposite to the developed countries on the digital divide, in terms of the levels of development of information technology infrastructure, Internet access, and the possession by citizens of information literacy skills as defined above.

The situation is however changing very fast, as confirmed by Jensen (1998), for many African countries. Starting from about the middle of the1990s, African countries have been recording rapid growth in their information technology infrastructure, particularly telecommunications and Internet access. The telecommunications sector of Nigeria, for instance, ranked as one of the first few fastest growing globally between 2002 and 2005.

There have also been rapid improvements in levels of access to computer systems and the Internet in tertiary educational institutions in specific African countries, as a result of the IT investment initiatives in many such institutions. Sani and Tiamiyu (2005) have observed, for instance, that automated information services (including Internet access services) in Nigerian federal universities began to accelerate as from the early 1990s, when the World Bank intervened with a loan to improve the institutional capacities of the Nigerian universities.

The growing amounts of investment that African tertiary education institutions have been committing to the development of information technology infrastructure mean that the institutions would be keenly interested in studies that investigate how the infrastructure is being used by their administrators, teachers, learners and students towards assessing the cost-benefit of their investments.

Studies of the use of Internet facilities by students and teachers to support teaching, learning and research in specific African tertiary educational institutions are presently few, and in-depth studies of the use of specific Internet resources such as search engines are rare. Accordingly, this study was motivated by the desire to collect and analyze empirical information on the use of Internet resources by students of Nigerian universities, and specifically, the.

Objectives of the Study

In this we are going to discus about the main objective of this study was that to investigate about the internet search engine and its application and knowledge that provide to researchers student. In Africa and Nigerian student were taking help from the student who have done the P.G from different university or pass out from University of lbadan. The methodology of search engine study required obtaining prior information on the search engines most preferred and used by information seekers in an African setting, as well as the subject topics on which the information seekers frequently searched for sources.

In this study student who have done P.G and collecting information about the and analyzing the data for the further research and development, in different university of Africa and university of Ibadanas are the main guide for the population of country. In order to find maximum value from the study of the students, its data collection and different type of information related to internet provide them a strong base for there further research and development in this field.

Accordingly, this study was designed to answer the following research questions:

1. What is the increment in the student who was using Internet?
2. Which search engine provide them a complete information about there research and development?
3. How time did student need for searching, and how did they acquire the Internet searching skills?
4. To what extent do the students search for Africa and Nigeria-specific information using the search engines?
5. Which types of information did the student collect from search engine or what are there related searches?

Literature Review

Nowadays, Internet has become a public teachers, from which students can collect information in every field like education, sex, market and etc. Internet also provide us following comfort in daily life routine like communication with people or delivery to support administrative, teaching/learning and research activities in tertiary educational institutions is acknowledged worldwide. Our country youth or the students being more exposed to information technologies in educational systems, as well as being more willing to try new things than the older members of society, that’s why the internet is domination in the field of technology. The main field in which Internet is used most is education, social interaction and entertainment.

In U.S they have find that people using internet are given below

• 86% of college students have gone online
• 59% of the general population
• 78% of college student online just to have fun.
• 64% of all Internet users; use internet for downloading music files, videos and etc.

The college students used the Internet nearly as much for social communication as they do for their education.

Different institute’s and academics are running for the investigation of student that in which field they are using internet or which type of education activities they are searching like communication, information retrieval, learning, teaching and research. Some of the studies have focused on Internet use alone, whereas others have investigated Internet use in the context of the array of information sources, including the Internet that students and their teachers could use in their learning, teaching and research.

Applebee, et al. (2000) undertook a nationwide study of the use of Internet services by Australian academics and found that, contrary to expectations, email did not appear to have been used extensively by the academics to communicate among themselves, that as many as 25.7% had never used it. to communicate with students, and that nearly a third reported that they were either non- or beginner-users of the Web.

Report on university of Texas in USA.

• 73% of the over 500 responding students used the Internet at least once a week on average;
• 37% frequented newsgroups, 9% chatted, and less than 2% played with multi-user dungeons.
• This was followed by visits to sites for mail (28%), chat (6%), search (6%), sports (6%), courses (4%), news (1%) sex (1%).
• The study found that the most common ways the respondents used to search for information was to use a search engine (48%) or
• The libraries Website (33%);
• The undergraduate students used search engines more than graduate students;
• At least one-half of the students with undeclared majors (58%), or in the business (57%), physical sciences/mathematics (55%), engineering (52%), and arts and humanities (50%) used search engines;

Another US study, by Korgen et al. (2001), found that

• Students’ self-reported Internet use was highest for freshmen,
• Followed by sophomores,
• Seniors, and juniors, in that order

Aman (2004) investigated the patterns of usage of

• Malaysian academic library websites among 823 university students
• 23 per cent of respondents however, the Internet was not their first choice in reference searching,

Ojedokun (2001) investigated access to, and use of, the Internet by students at the University of Botswana. He found that

• students used the Internet more for email than for browsing,
• Email was used more for communicating with fellow students, friends and relatives than with their lecturers.

In the Nigerian context, Ajuwon (2003) surveyed 183 first year medical and nursing students of the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria,

• (60.7%)’ of the students had used the Internet before the study
• 76% of the students use internet for e-mailing

Use of Search Engines for Research

• Internet usage was email (100% of the respondents),
• followed by research (87%), search
• for specific information (60%), and
• To keep abreast of the latest news (53%).

The Yahoo! search engine was the most popular search engine (100% of the respondents), Google (68%).

Methodology

As in the above topics objective of study we have study primary or small collection of data and the report survey. In this topic our main focus on collecting the data information about search engines. In order to determine the sub-population of such searchers to focus upon and sample from, the study made the following assumptions and inferences:

• Search engine use would be required more in research-oriented than in less research-oriented work and learning activities; and consequently,
• Postgraduate students (who are usually involved with research-oriented projects and courses of study) would be more motivated to use search engines for information searching on different subjects than their undergraduate counterparts in the same setting.

These assumptions informed using the postgraduate students of a Nigerian university as the focal population for the study, and specifically, the postgraduate students of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where the researchers were also based at the time of the study. The University of Ibadan is the oldest university in Nigeria, and offers academic and professional postgraduate programmes at the doctoral, master’s, diploma and certificate levels through academic departments in the Faculties of Agriculture, Arts, Education, Science, Social Science, Technology, the College of Medicine, and some academic institutes and centres.

The University also has the largest number of postgraduate students in the country. The population of registered postgraduate students at the university at the time of study was 6265 (Source: Data Processing Unit, Postgraduate School, University of Ibadan), and a sample of 450 (i.e. about 7% postgraduate students was targeted as adequate for the study, based on such considerations as the size and characteristics of the focal population and the sample sizes of related studies of students in Nigeria and other developing countries.

Findings

Internet Experience

After the analyzing that how much of the people had already use internet, then on surveying we found that the experience which the people having with internet related to duration is shown in the table1. And it shows that people using internet for more than 24 months is 78.3%., i.e., before commencing their postgraduate programnmes.

Skills for using Search Engine Usage

In our next findings I have shown that how people used to understand the usage of search engine, so by doing survey we have found that 169 (51.7%) were taught by friends, 81(24.8%) of the student started with it as hit and trail, 37 (11.3%) got it from there school computer teacher or trainer, 6 (1.8%) had made it simpler by reading it in books.

Preferences for Search Engines

After asking from the people that which search engine they gave the preference first then the 67.3% people say Google and 20.8% said Yahoo!

Reasons for Search Engine Preferences

Why most of people choose Google for there search purpose because it provide

• Quality items
• User friendly
• Speed
• Data collection to topics is very vast
• All types of files like PDF, ppt and etc.

Number of Search Engines used Together on regular basis

Now on further analyses we found that 84% people are that used just one search engine on a regular basis, (89.3%) of them used Google. This suggests that Google is probably the entry-level search engine for most postgraduate students represented by the study’s sample, which is complemented by Yahoo! as the students get more adventurous.

Confidence and Proficiency in Using Search Engines

Most of the respondents believed that they felt confident in their abilities, when using search engines to find information online, with 47% and 42% indicating that they were ‘very confident’ or ‘somewhat confident’ respectively (Table 6).

Conclusion

The structure of Web pages seems to be a good resource with which search engines can improve their results. As well, there will be a shift towards providing specialized search facilities for the scholarly part of the Web that encompasses a considerable part of the deep Web. Having the Beta version of Google Scholar released in November 2004, other major players in search engine industry are expected to invest on rivals for this new service.

Search engines are trying to consider recommendations of special-interest groups into their search techniques. Limitation in funds has enforced libraries and other major information user organizations to share their online resources. Federated search is a sample of future cooperative search and information retrieval facilities. Finally, we addressed the efforts of search engine companies in breaking their borders through making search possible for mobile phones and other wireless information and communication devices. The World Wide Web will be more usable in the future.

The Web’s security and privacy are two important issues for the coming years. Web search industry is opening new horizons for the global village. Meanwhile many issues have remained unsolved or incomplete still. Information extraction, ambiguity in addresses and names, personalization and multimedia searching among others are major issues in the next few years.

References

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