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From Majestic 12 Distributed Search Engine

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Welcome to the Majestic 12 Help Manual

Majestic 12 Node

What is it really about?

If you're reading this, you must be online and will probably agree that the Internet has become so important to our everyday lives that we can hardly think its living without it. Since the Internet's very beginning, it has always been important to be able to find information quickly and accurately. Had it not been for the invention of the search engine, then the Internet would not have become what it has become today. In layman's terms, search engines are like signs and maps; They point us in the right direction to the information that we are looking for. Imagine trying to travel on the M6 motorway (a major road in the United Kingdom) with no signs or road maps… No one would know when or where to get off to get to where they needed to be. If you can't imagine your life without using search engines, then read on.

So what about search engines?

There are millions web sites out there. With billions of pages, so far only a handful of huge companies have been able to create a search engine that can provide relevant information to the users. Big companies control the entry point to the data you seek, and neither you, nor webmasters who run the sites, have a say in the matter.

How does Majestic-12 fit into all this?

Majestic-12 is developing a search engine scalable to billions of web pages that is based on support by the community. Since the task of building a World Wide Web search engine is so huge, we have chosen to make Majestic-12 Distributed Search Engine based on the concept of distributed computing. The idea being that many machines work on one task can get it done quicker than one large machine alone. One of the biggest challenges with the search engine is actually getting billions of pages, and to do this cost effectively we have created a client software called MJ12node, that can be run on otherwise idle computers. This concept was used successfully by projects like SETI@Home and distributed.net.

MJ12node software combines machines from all around the globe to crawl, collate, and then send back it's findings to the master server. The crawled data will be analysed (indexed) and added to the Majestic-12 search engine. The result? Hopefully the biggest crawl of the web, and perhaps even the most up to date search engine of it's time.

Why run a Node?

By running a Majestic-12 Node you will achieve a number of worthy goals:

help the Internet community to create the search engine they control
use your otherwise idle computer and broadband connection - you paid for it, why not use it?
help science to understand the Web better
be part of the growing community that will help shape the Internet the way we want!
prove that one person can make a difference: your contribution to the effort will be visible

So, if you're interested in the starting the Distributed Search Engine Revolution... then follow me! :)

This inspirational speech is based on original Evil-Dragon's introduction to MJ12node's manual.