Deep Web Search: What’s Possible
Trying to wrap your mind around the Deep Web is like trying to imagine there is a whole other world with even more resources and living beings than on Earth. It’s a territory unknown to most, yet has potential for everyone.
What is the Deep Web?
The Deep Web is sometimes referred to as the “invisible web,” or the “hidden web,” all of which reference the unreachable pages on the Internet. These pages are unreachable because Web crawlers in search engines’ databases cannot index them.The Deep Web refers to content on the World Wide Web that is not catalogued by standard search engines. To add perspective, the portion of the World Wide Web that can be picked up by a standard search engine, such as Google, is known as the “surface web.”
The Deep Web is actually much larger than the surface web, leaving an enormous amount of information unseen and irretrievable by search engines. As our founder Michael Bergman says, “Searching on the Internet today can be compared to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is deep and therefore missed.”
How Do You Access the Deep Web?
Deep web sources store their content in searchable databases that only produce results dynamically in response to a direct request. But a direct query is a long, taxing way to search and is only a one-at-a-time process.
Accessing Deep Web content is difficult, but understanding it can be even more challenging. BrightPlanet’s search technology automates the process of making dozens of direct queries simultaneously using multiple-thread technology. It is the only search technology that is capable of identifying, retrieving, qualifying, and organizing both “deep” and “surface” content. With BrightPlanet’s expertise, deep web content can be retrieved and comprehended for specialized and general use.
Who Can Use Deep Web
The knowledge to be appreciated on the Deep Web is almost infinite, and there is Deep Web content relevant and useful for every market. One sector with particular Deep Web relevance is the government, or the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). Because so much communication occurs online, you can imagine the wealth of information the Internet can provide the IC. But with the ever-increasing size of the Internet and its real-time changes, monitoring and dissecting information is difficult. Massive, multiple, real-time sensor data streams cause bottlenecks on networks that swamp storage devices and overwhelm current query, analytics, and visualization tools that are needed to produce finished intelligence. BrightPlanet’s technologies can harvest, classify, and archive this information from deep outlets, making it easier for the IC to monitor what is being said and who is saying it.
The Deep Web is full of Big Data (datasets too large to be captured and indexed) consisting of records, documents, and files that could be invaluable to not only the IC, but many other sectors, as well. BrightPlanet’s specialized web analytics tools can help you access and interpret this information that is otherwise undiscovered in the layers of the Deep Web.
Benefits of Exploring the Deep Web
If you’re not satisfied with the “surface” results that Google, or another search engine, is returning, the Deep Web is where you need to go. With an estimated 7,500 terabytes of information, the Deep Web contains content that can help your business grow and go where no business has gone before. The Deep Web can help you find messages and communication, occurring on outlets such as forums. The deep web can provide you with detailed, topic-specific research from sources such as conference reports, white papers, proprietary journals, databases, and non-patented literature.
Don’t stop your search at the surface; dig into the content-rich mines of the Deep Web. We shouldn’t be asking what’s possible with the Deep Web. With so much untapped content and potential, we should instead be asking, what isn’t possible?
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Photo courtesy of Automania
