Distinguish between the internet and the World Wide Web.

Outline two advantages of using open standards.

Outline why a search engine using the HITS algorithm might produce different page ranking from one using the PageRank algorithm.

Web crawlers browse the World Wide Web.

Explain how data stored in a meta-tag is used by a web crawler.

Award [2 max].
The internet is a global network of interconnected computers / a network of networks;

The World Wide Web is software / a service that runs on the hardware of the internet and provides access to content / a collection of pages that can be accessed through hyperlinks / a way of accessing and sharing the information that is held on the internet in webpages;

The World Wide Web uses the http protocol. This is only one of the many protocols used by the internet;

E-mail, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and instant messaging services are part of the internet but not of the web;

Award [4 max].
Open standards provide a publicly available specification for a specified task;
This is an agreed set of parameters that enable interoperability and/or compatibility to occur;

Using Open standards means that you are not subject to a governing body with its own agenda/self-interest;
Thus, you can be confident that you won’t be subject to fees/bias;

Open standards promote interoperability;
This enables the various devices to communicate with each other;

Open standards advocates also argue that openness encourages better and more secure systems;
this is because more people are able to analyse the standards and resulting software and no-one has a proprietary interest in suppressing knowledge of problems to keep sales up.

Mark as [2] + [2].

Award [2 max].
The HITS Algorithm ranks the page based on a combination of its importance as a hub and an authority;
The PageRank Algorithm ranks the page by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine the relative importance of the website;

Award [3 max].
Meta tags are included in the header of a web-page which are available to a web-crawler and give information about the page that it could make use of;
When the web-page is crawled, a copy of the HTML is replicated in the search engine database;
When a user enters text into a search the search engine retrieves the data indexed from the web-page;
And the search engine ranks and displays the content (in order of relevance);

Standard question and well answered.

Most students referred to the idea of interoperability.

Many answers talked generally about popularity and some did mention the idea of hubs and authorities and others referred to the quality of connections, but few put the two ideas together correctly.

Many answers identified the content of the tags and some were able to relate this content to subsequent decisions taken by the web crawler.