Search.ch
Encyclopedia
search.ch is a search engine
and web portal
for Switzerland
. It was founded in 1995 by Rudolf Räber and Bernhard Seefeld as a regional search engine. In the following years many other services were added, such as a phonebook in 1999, a free SMS
service in 2000 (now reduced to only one free SMS per week). In May 2004 search.ch was acquired by the Swiss Post
.
Today, search.ch is the second most popular search engine and most popular phonebook in Switzerland. According the WEMF COMIS 2003 it has about 1.3 mio users at home and at work (about 50% of the then active internet population of Switzerland). According to the same study, search.ch is the second most popular site in Switzerland. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, which only studies home users in Switzerland, it is the fifth most popular site.
The search technology is home grown. The user can restrict his search to regions of Switzerland, such as a canton
or a city
. The web crawler
looks only at sites in the .ch
and .li
top-level domain
s and a number of automatically and manually updated list of Swiss websites on other domains. The index is updated weekly.
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
and web portal
Web portal
A web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information in the World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way....
for Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. It was founded in 1995 by Rudolf Räber and Bernhard Seefeld as a regional search engine. In the following years many other services were added, such as a phonebook in 1999, a free SMS
Short message service
Short Message Service is a text messaging service component of phone, web, or mobile communication systems, using standardized communications protocols that allow the exchange of short text messages between fixed line or mobile phone devices...
service in 2000 (now reduced to only one free SMS per week). In May 2004 search.ch was acquired by the Swiss Post
Swiss Post
Swiss Post is the postal service of Switzerland. A public company owned by the Swiss Confederation, it is the country's second largest employer...
.
Today, search.ch is the second most popular search engine and most popular phonebook in Switzerland. According the WEMF COMIS 2003 it has about 1.3 mio users at home and at work (about 50% of the then active internet population of Switzerland). According to the same study, search.ch is the second most popular site in Switzerland. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, which only studies home users in Switzerland, it is the fifth most popular site.
The search technology is home grown. The user can restrict his search to regions of Switzerland, such as a canton
Cantons of Switzerland
The 26 cantons of Switzerland are the member states of the federal state of Switzerland. Each canton was a fully sovereign state with its own borders, army and currency from the Treaty of Westphalia until the establishment of the Swiss federal state in 1848...
or a city
City
A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.For example, in the U.S...
. The web crawler
Web crawler
A Web crawler is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion. Other terms for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, Web spiders, Web robots, or—especially in the FOAF community—Web scutters.This process is called Web...
looks only at sites in the .ch
.ch
.ch is the Internet country code top-level domain for Switzerland. It is administered by SWITCH Information Technology Services.The ".ch" domain does not come from the name for Switzerland in any of its national languages; "die Schweiz", "Suisse", "Svizzera" or "Svizra"...
and .li
.li
.li is the Internet country code top-level domain for Liechtenstein. It was created in 1993. The domain is sponsored and administered by the Hochschule Liechtenstein in Vaduz, but domain names with the extension can also be registered with SWITCH, administrator of Switzerland's .ch ccTLD...
top-level domain
Top-level domain
A top-level domain is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last label of a...
s and a number of automatically and manually updated list of Swiss websites on other domains. The index is updated weekly.
External links
- search.ch
- tel.search.ch phonebook
- map.search.ch Swiss maps
- sms.search.ch sms service
- immo.search.ch immo portal search service
- Swiss Post