Year 5 - Lesson 4 Selecting Search Results

Year 5 – Computing systems and networks – Systems and Searching

Lesson 4:

Selecting Search Results

A brief history of the World Wide Web

1989:Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web to
make it easier to share documents with other scientists

1991:The first website was launched

(summary of the World Wide Web: https://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html )

1994:The first widely used search engine (Yahoo!) was
launched

1998:Google was founded

Growth of the World Wide Web

Year

Number of websites

1991

1

1994 (Yahoo! launched)

2,738

1998 (Google launched)

2,410,067

2022 (most recent count)

1,900,000,000

There is a huge amount of information on the World Wide

Web, which means finding things can be difficult!

Growth of the World Wide Web

Year

Number of websites

1991

1

1994 (Yahoo! launched)

2,738

1998 (Google launched)

2,410,067

2022 (most recent count)

1,900,000,000

What does the huge growth in the number of websites

mean for finding things?

How do you find things?

I would like to find out
about rabbits.

What could I do?

What would it be useful
for me to look for in the
index, if I want to know about rabbits?

Indexing

Open Ended

What would it be useful for me to look for in the index, if I want to know about rabbits?

Here are the pages referred to in the index.

Indexing

Look in a non-fiction book.

Pick a word from the index and
see if you can find where the
word appears in the book.

How would you find
information related to that
word without an index?

Try using an index yourself

How do search engines select results?

By using the index of a book, you can find information
quickly and save time

Search engines also use an index

Search engine’s index

Search engines use programs
called web crawlers to create
an index of the web

The indices are stored on a big
system of computers called a
data centre

​www.google.com/about/ datacenters/locations

How does a search engine use an index?

When you enter a search term, the
search engine selects results from
its index. It does not need to search

every web page on the internet.

You are going to create an index for

the classroom, so you can find

things without having to search the

whole classroom.

Choose five different

items that you can find in

this classroom.

List all the places where
you can find those items.

There is an example

opposite.

Indexing the classroom

Item

Location(s) in the classroom

Rulers

Pots on tables
Maths cupboard
Ruler drawer

Coloured pencils

Art cupboard

Whiteboard pens

A pot next to the whiteboard
Learners’ trays
Stationery cupboard

Computer

Teacher’s desk

Chairs

Around each table
Next to the teacher’s desk

Exercise books

Shelves
Learners’ drawers
Teacher’s desk

​Google Classroom

The internet is vast and searches often return billions of

results.

Most search engines will tell you how many results there

are for your search term.

So many results

You could search for:

“Dogs”

then...

“Black dogs”

then...

“Black Labrador dog”

What do you notice?

Narrowing a search

Choose a broad search term and narrow
it. What happens to the number of
results?

Put your searches in quote marks, for
example “black dog”, so the whole phrase
is searched.

Note your findings on a dry wipe board.

Now do your own

Search 1:

Search 1 results:

Search 2:

Search 2 results:

Search 3:

Search 3 results:

Open Ended

Add in your

Search 1:

Search 1 results:

Search 2: 

Search 2 results:

Search 3:

Search 3 results:

Complete the sentence below to explain how search
engines select results:

A _______ uses _______ to create an _______ of

_______.

webpages

web crawlers

index

search engine

Complete this sentence

A search engine uses web crawlers to create an

index of webpages.

Home

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In this lesson, you…

Learnt how search engines
create an index to select
results

Next lesson, you will…

Learn how the results that
search engines select are
ranked