An Approach to Trie Based Keyword Search for Search Engines

Search Engines use indexing techniques to minimize the time taken to find the relevant information to a search query. They maintain a keywords list that may reside either in the memory or in the external storage, like a hard disk. While a pure binary search can be used for this purpose, it suffers from performance issue when keywords are stored in the external storage. Some implementations of search engines use a B-tree and sparse indexes to reduce access time. This paper aims at reducing the keyword access time further. It presents a keyword search technique that utilizes a combination of trie data structure and a new keyword prefixing method. Experimental results show good improvement in performance over pure binary search. The merits of incorporating trie based approach into contemporary indexing methods is also discussed. Keyword prefixing method is described and some salient steps in the process of keyword generation are outlined.