搜索引擎作为互联网发展中至关重要的一种应用，已经成为互联网各个领域的制高点，其重要性不言而喻。搜索引擎领域也是互联网应用中不多见的以核心技术作为其命脉的领域，搜索引擎各个子系统是如何设计的？这成为广大技术人员和搜索引擎优化人员密切关注的内容。
本书的最大特点是内容新颖全面而又通俗易懂。对于实际搜索引擎所涉及的各种核心技术都有全面细致的介绍，除了作为搜索系统核心的网络爬虫、索引系统、排序系统、链接分析及用户分析外，还包括网页反作弊、缓存管理、网页去重技术等实际搜索引擎必须关注的技术，同时用相当大的篇幅讲解了云计算与云存储的核心技术原理。另外，本书也密切关注搜索引擎发展的前沿技术：Google的咖啡因系统及Megastore等云计算新技术、百度的暗网抓取技术阿拉丁计划、内容农场作弊、机器学习排序等。诸多新技术在相关章节都有详细讲解，同时对于社会化搜索、实时搜索及情境搜索等搜索引擎的未来发展方向做了技术展望。为了增进读者的理解，全书大量引入形象的图片来讲解算法原理，相信读者会发现原来搜索引擎的核心技术理解起来比原先想象的要简单得多。

Class-tested and coherent, this groundbreaking new textbook teaches classic web information retrieval, including web search and the related areas of text classification and text clustering from basic concepts. Written from a computer science perspective by three leading experts in the field, it gives an up-to-date treatment of all aspects of the design and implementation of systems for gathering, indexing, and searching documents; methods for evaluating systems; and an introduction to the use of machine learning methods on text collections. All the important ideas are explained using examples and figures, making it perfect for introductory courses in information retrieval for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in computer science. Based on feedback from extensive classroom experience, the book has been carefully structured in order to make teaching more natural and effective. Although originally designed as the primary text for a graduate or advanced undergraduate course in information retrieval, the book will also create a buzz for researchers and professionals alike.
Contents
1. Information retrieval using the Boolean model; 2. The dictionary and postings lists; 3. Tolerant retrieval; 4. Index construction; 5. Index compression; 6. Scoring and term weighting; 7. Vector space retrieval; 8. Evaluation in information retrieval; 9. Relevance feedback and query expansion; 10. XML retrieval; 11. Probabilistic information retrieval; 12. Language models for information retrieval; 13. Text classification and Naive Bayes; 14. Vector space classification; 15. Support vector machines and kernel functions; 16. Flat clustering; 17. Hierarchical clustering; 18. Dimensionality reduction and latent semantic indexing; 19. Web search basics; 20. Web crawling and indexes; 21. Link analysis.
Reviews
“This is the first book that gives you a complete picture of the complications that arise in building a modern web-scale search engine. You'll learn about ranking SVMs, XML, DNS, and LSI. You'll discover the seedy underworld of spam, cloaking, and doorway pages. You'll see how MapReduce and other approaches to parallelism allow us to go beyond megabytes and to efficiently manage petabytes." -Peter Norvig, Director of Research, Google Inc.
"Introduction to Information Retrieval is a comprehensive, up-to-date, and well-written introduction to an increasingly important and rapidly growing area of computer science. Finally, there is a high-quality textbook for an area that was desperately in need of one." -Raymond J. Mooney, Professor of Computer Sciences, University of Texas at Austin
“Through compelling exposition and choice of topics, the authors vividly convey both the fundamental ideas and the rapidly expanding reach of information retrieval as a field.” -Jon Kleinberg, Professor of Computer Science, Cornell University