This chapter gives a discussion of search processes on networks. It begins with a discussion of web search, including crawlers and web ranking algorithms such as PageRank. Search in distributed databases such as peer-to-peer networks is also discussed, including simple breadth-first search style algorithms and more advanced “supernode” approaches. Finally, network navigation is discussed at some length, motivated by consideration of Milgram's letter passing experiment. Kleinberg's variant of the small-world model is introduced and it is shown that efficient navigation is possible only for certain values of the model parameters. Similar results are also derived for the hierarchical model of Watts et al.
Spatial search strategies for open government data