Our Search Engine Technology

A Simple PHP Search Engine

It all started as a simple laboration. Making a simple search engine using PHP and files for data storage.

The first working prototype was done in a weekend and was capable of spidering the Internet, parsing and indexing pages and answering queries Google style. All in about 1000 lines of PHP code and HTML pages.

A year later the engine has grown to about 5000 lines of PHP, SQL and HTML code. It uses mySQL for data storage, supports keyword phrases, uses html links to enhance the search results and has received it's own domain.

Feature List

Uses about 3GB storage to index 250,000 pages and links
Can run from a shared hosting account with PHP and mySQL
Efficient keyword based index for fast queries
Supports keyphrases up to 4 words long
The web spider automatically follow links finding new pages
Finds keywords in title, description, anchor text, page contents and URL
Configurable content filters can remove sexually explicit content, spam and other unvanted pages
Keeps track of recent human generated searches
Users can add their own webpages to the index
Uses CashRank(TM) algorithm to find relevant pages

There is a lot of enhancements planned, including a members area where you will be able to run experiments on your own webpages.

If you are looking for search engine software we are not ready to distribute our code quite yet. Meanwhile take a look at our list of search engine software where a lot of popular free and commercial search software is listed.

Simon,
Secret Search Engine Labs