Java Reference
In-Depth Information
Finding people and things
Search engines do a pretty good job of meeting the needs of most users. People frequently
use a search engine to find the address of a business or movie show times. A word pro-
cessor can perform a simple search to locate a specific word or phrase in a text. However,
this task can get more complicated when we need to consider other factors such as whether
synonyms should be used or if we are interested in finding things closely related to a topic.
For example, let's say we visit a website because we are interested in buying a new laptop.
After all, who doesn't need a new laptop? When you go to the site, a search engine will be
used to find laptops that possess the features you are looking for. The search is frequently
conducted based on previous analysis of vendor information. This analysis often requires
text to be processed in order to derive useful information that can eventually be presented
to a customer.
The presentation may be in the form of facets. These are normally displayed on the left-
hand side of a web page. For example, the facets for laptops might include categories such
as an Ultrabook, Chromebook, or hard disk size. This is illustrated in the following figure,
which is part of an Amazon web page:
