In Chapter 3, I learned more than I had in the previous chapters. I already understood the basic concepts, like what a search engine is and how to check the validity of websites. In high school English classes, we often focused on using credible sources, and that idea was reinforced throughout my schooling.

What really caught my attention was learning how search engines work behind the scenes, I never knew that something called a web robot, or spider, was responsible for scanning the web to find new pages to add to or update them in the database. I had never really thought about how it worked before, but it is a good thing because it is way more efficient than having people do it manually, especially with how many websites exist. I also found stemming to be incredibly useful. It helps broaden your search by including variations of a word or phrase. If you do not know how to narrow your search down, it can make it easier to find what you are looking for.

Another tool I found useful was the use of search operators. There have been many times when I was scrolling through pages just trying to find the right one. If I had known how to use those operators, I could have saved myself a lot of time and frustration.

Lastly, I liked learning about the purpose of the meta tag. In my PHP course, the meta tag was always included on the pages we created, but we never actually talked about what it did. Now I understand that when a spider scans a page, it reads the meta tags and sends that information to the search engine. This helps the search engine better understand what the page is truly about, making it more likely to appeart in relevant searches.