Distributed Search

What Does Distributed Search Mean?

Distributed search is a search engine technique that uses many computers and networks to handle tasks related to indexing, query processing and Web crawling. This distributed model concept uses multiple computers and networks to provide computing and bandwidth resources.

Distributed search, which offers the most efficient search approach and solution, follows the open standards of many search engines, enabling remote querying and results distribution.

Techopedia Explains Distributed Search

Distributed search is used by all global Web search engines via thousands of computers and networks. Distributed search is a helpful search engine technique, but it also has certain disadvantages. These include:

• Loss of proprietary advantages
• Committee design, which results in modification and revision delays
• Layers of inefficiency, which occur when a search engine translates data from standard to proprietary formats

The following are standard distributed search requirements:

• Standard transport mechanism, such as HTTP or Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)
• Basic query syntax and interaction, whereby a sent query obtains a list of results
• Single relevance scoring range, in which meaningful Extensible Markup Language (XML) tag results allow merge and display efficiency