Software:FAROO

From HandWiki
FAROO
Developer(s)FAROO Limited
Initial releaseNovember 2005; 18 years ago (2005-11)
Stable release
3.5.1030 / July 2013; 10 years ago (2013-07)[1]
Written inC#
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows
Platform.NET Framework and Mono
TypeWeb search engine
LicenseFreeware
Websitewww.faroo.com

FAROO is a universal web search engine based on peer-to-peer technology. It uses a distributed crawler that stores search data on users' computers instead of a central server. Whenever a user visits a website, it is automatically indexed and distributed to the network. Ranking is done by comparing usage statistics of users, such as web pages visited, amount of time spent on each page, and whether the pages were bookmarked or printed.[2][3]

Properties

  • FAROO takes user behavior into account when calculating a website's rank, resulting in more relevant search results than traditional search engines can[when?] provide (see filter bubble).
  • Because pages are automatically indexed upon being visited, updates to the index are nearly instant.[2]
  • No central servers are required, drastically reducing infrastructure costs and allowing the service to scale infinitely.[2]
  • FAROO plans to share up to 50% of its advertising revenue with its users.[clarification needed][when?]
  • The index grows with the user base, so a small user base would result in a small index and therefore inaccurate results.[4]
  • The nature of the service could allow easy manipulation by spammers,[5] although FAROO claims that their algorithms prevent this.[6]

References

External links