1.2 Major terms

In this thesis you will hear a lot about the following terms: search engines,
search engine dependency and data quality.
Search engine is the most flexible technology which has been created in
order to crawl the web. A search engine is no more than a web application which is
processing data. A search engine does not create data it just process some
information it has in his index.
I describe search engine dependency as the fact that one does not make the
choice between one search engine and another. Search engine dependency is very
relevant in most of the countries. Most of the people are using only one single search
engine when performing requests on the web. I will speak as well about bad habits
when dealing with search engines. For example you can be dependent of using a
search engine but using it badly.
Data quality is the quality of data. Data are of high quality "if they are fit for
their intended uses in operations, decision making and planning ". Alternatively, the
data are deemed of high quality if they correctly represent the real-world construct to
which they refer. These two views can often be in disagreement, even about the same
set of data used for the same purpose8.