Search Engines

The most complicated but useful way to locate information is to use a search engine. These search the web using keywords. There are hundreds of search engines with new ones being built all the time. Some, like Google and Yahoo, try to search as many places as possible. Others exist just for searching specific topics ranging from scientific research articles (scirus.com) to finding the nearest golf course (from golf.com). They vary a lot in how they are used and in how much of the web they search. They are difficult to use well, so we will spend some time on them.

Image by Phil Bradley under a Creative Commons license