Abstract
This article presents a basic concept for decentralised web search which addresses major shortcomings of current web search engines. Its methods are characterised by their local working principles, making it possible to employ them on diverse hardware configurations. The concept’s implementation in form of an interactive, librarian-inspired peer-to-peer software client, called ‘WebEngine’, is elaborated on in detail. This software extends and interconnects common web servers creating and forming a decentralised web search system on top of the existing web structure while—for the first time—combining modern text analysis techniques with novel and efficient search functions as well as approaches for the semantically induced P2P-network construction and its flexible management. This way, an alternative, fully integrated and powerful web search engine under the motto ‘The Web is its own search engine.’ is built making the web searchable without any central authority. The article closes with an overview of improvements and additions that have been implemented since the official launch of the WebEngine in 2019. Here, current research directions will be touched as well.
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Notes
- 1.
In the first version of the P2P-plug-in, indexing is limited to nouns and names as the carriers of meaning.
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Kubek, M., Unger, H. (2022). WebEngine Version 1.0: Building a Decentralised Web Search Engine. In: The Autonomous Web. Studies in Big Data, vol 101. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90936-9_3
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