This book provides a broad introduction to search engines by integrating five different perspectives on Web search and search engines that are usually dealt with separately: the technical perspective, the user perspective, the internet-based research perspective, the economic perspective, and the societal perspective. After a general introduction to the topic, two foundational chapters present how search tools can cover the Web's content and how search engines achieve this by crawling and processing the found documents. The next chapter on user behavior covers how people phrase their search queries and interact with search engines. This knowledge builds the foundation for describing how results are ranked and presented. The following three chapters then deal with the economic side of search engines, i.e., Google and the search engine market, search engine optimization (SEO), and the intermingling of organic and sponsored search results. Next, the chapter on search skills presents techniques for improving searches through advanced search interfaces and commands. Following that, the Deep Web and how its content can be accessed is explained. The two subsequent chapters cover ways to improve the quality of search results, while the next chapter describes how to access the Deep Web. Last but not least, the following chapter deals with the societal role of search engines before the final chapter concludes the book with an outlook on the future of Web search. With this book, students and professionals in disciplines like computer science, online marketing, or library and information science will learn how search engines work, what their main shortcomings are at present, and what prospects there are for their further development. The different views presented will help them to understand not only the basic technologies but also the implications the current implementations have concerning economic exploitation and societal impact.

"Web Search Engine Research", edited by Dirk Lewandowski, provides an understanding of Web search engines from the unique perspective of Library and Information Science. The book explores a range of topics including retrieval effectiveness, user satisfaction, the evaluation of search interfaces, the impact of search on society, reliability of search results, query log analysis, user guidance in the search process, and the influence of search engine optimization (SEO) on results quality. While research in computer science has mainly focused on technical aspects of search engines, LIS research is centred on users' behaviour when using search engines and how this interaction can be evaluated. LIS research provides a unique perspective in intermediating between the technical aspects, user aspects and their impact on their role in knowledge acquisition. This book is directly relevant to researchers and practitioners in library and information science, computer science, including Web researchers.

In an era in which social integration is increasingly predicated on digital participation, barrier-free access to the Internet and key information systems has become vital for equal participation in social life. This volume presents the basic theory and practice of designing barrier-free information systems, which are a key element of an inclusive information society.