FAQ Search Engines
General questions on the Self-Monitoring of Search Engines consolidated in the FSM
Who are the members of the Self-Monitoring of Search Engines?
Members are, in alphabetical order:
What is its purpose?
The internet offers a huge amount of information. Nowadays, search engines are an essential support for finding requested content among the complex offers of the internet. Because of the increasing use of search engines and the growing amount of content made available by them, youth protection in search engines has gained significance. Providers of search engines, aware of their particular role in making information accessible in the internet, have already been committed to consumer and youth protection for a long time.
In February 2005, many famous search engine providers founded the Self-Monitoring of Search Engine Providers consolidated in the FSM. They have agreed on common standards to guarantee transparency, consumer and youth protection - without violating the freedom of opinion or using censorship. As a result, they have realised these ideas within a common code of conduct of search engine providers.
What is the relation between the FSM and the Self-Monitoring of Search Engine Providers?
Members of Self-Monitoring Search Engines are also members of the FSM. The Self-Monitoring of Search Engine Providers is a sub-association (here: search engines) of the FSM. Referring to § 2 para 2 of the FSM articles they formed their own sub-code of conduct.
Therefore, possible violations of the subcode are not only subject to the subcode of conduct of search engine providers and the according codes of practice, but also constitute a violation of the general articles of the FSM, such as the general complaint rules and the code of conduct of the FSM.
Some search engine providers which signed the code of conduct use the search function and results of other providers. What is their contribution?
Whether or not providers use their own search engine infrastructure or purchase third party’s search results is not of relevance for the rules of the Voluntary Self-Monitoring. The commitment to the Voluntary Self-Monitoring is an individual decision of the particular search engine provider to support and organise costumer and youth protection, now and in the future. In addition, purchasing search results has no impact on possible technical measures for the protection of children and minors.
How will the provider inform users on the functionality of search engines (referring to § 2 para 1 of the subcode)?
Each search engine provider will realise an individual implementation, but commonly they will inform the users about technical principles and functionality of search engine technologies in a comprehensible manner. Furthermore, the user will be advised on how to design a website so that search engines will understand the web site’s content and may react correctly to according requests.
There are various realisations of the voluntary obligation of self-monitoring of search engine providers:
- AOL: various assistants for standard search, advanced search and Google-generated results
- Google: various items at “Our products – Help” as well as “For Site Owners – Webmaster Central” and FAQ
- Lycos (particularly “How does the search work?” on the German site)
- MSN: “Help and functions” and “Help for site owners”
- t-info: FAQ - “Questions of users on the search and search results” and “questions of web masters concerning suchen.de”
- Yahoo!: particularly “general search help”, “Search Index”, “search ranking”, “Yahoo! Web crawler” and “Search spam and index deletions”
How do search engines work?
Search engines work – simply put – in three steps: Firstly, they collect information, secondly, they edit it and thirdly, they re-provide them on request.
1. Gathering information (acquisition)
Information is gathered by a crawler (also spider, search robot, bot etc). This is a software which follows the hyperlinks of websites and searches the internet systematically, collects all provided information of a website and stores it on servers. In this uninterrupted process the data is continuously updated and supplemented.
2. Editing information
Afterwards, an index is generated from the gathered information (also catalogue, data base etc). The web sites acquired by the crawler are edited, collected, analysed, and all found content will be indexed and linked to the URLs (and other information like time etc) where they were found.
3. Providing information (presentation of results)
When a search request is made by the user, instead of scanning the entire WWW, the software only needs to query the prepared indexes which can be scanned extra fast and efficiently. Finally, the most relevant search results are presented in a list.
Why do different search engines provide different results?
Different search engines might provide quite different results for the same search item. The reason is that the above-mentioned processes vary from engine to engine. Particularly the way of gathering information and ranking the results of a request – that is the particular method of determining the relevance of websites for a request, the “search engine algorithms”, are well-kept business secrets. In this fully automatic process, search engine algorithms combine innumerable internal and external factors. Factors are e.g. quality and quantity of content, which are determined by frequency and placement of search items, or the amount of links to other websites and the quality of pages where the link emanates from. Accordant to the dynamics of the internet’s progress, the search engine algorithms change continuously, too. Therefore, results of the several engines are subject to a steady change.
Questions on the BPjM module
Is the BPjM module also used abroad, in search engines of members of the FSM?
The BPjM module avoids the presentation of internet addresses which are included in the List of media harmful to young persons pursuant to Article 18 of the Protection of Young Persons Act. This is a legally regulated process carried out by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien - BPjM). This module is used in Germany as well as in internet services of foreign search engine providers which are focusing the German market. However, the use of the BPjM module is limited to services with a “.de” domain.
Does the use of the BPjM module cause censorship?
The cooperation is particularly important for search engine providers because the BPjM is the governmentally authorised agency to index internet content which is regarded as harmful to minors. The registration of websites is hence a legal procedure. Therefore, the providers of such content may speak out, they are notified of the registration and may request removal from the list once they have altered the respective online content. Consequently, the BPjM module is a legal process for the deletion of illegal search results and an acknowledged way to assure youth protection. Thus, the search engine providers obey the law without being exposed to the allegation of censorship.
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