Helpful Internet Links

About Search Engines

In my recent past life, I worked in several capacities for a company that built, promoted and hosted commercial Web sites. I did research to write Internet radio minute segments to accompany our commercials. In my civilian life, I search for needed information and shop regularly on the Internet. And, I try to keep up with the literature, a forever losing battle given the speed at which things change on the Internet. I'm not an expert, but maybe I can help; or, we can commiserate or have fun together.

Once your computer is online through your Internet Access Provider, you can surf the Net either aimlessly (channel surfing without the remote) if you just want to while away the time, or navigate more effectively if you need to get things done. If you mean business, go for one of the best search Web sites above. They have larger databases, are better maintained, and are more up to date than most. These are the ones that Web promoters make sure their Web sites are registered with.

The search sites are of three main types: a) directory, where the links to the Web sites are arranged by subjects and you navigate the directory tree down to the information you want; b) search engine, where you enter a few keywords in the query box; search engines get their database from registrants and from spiders that crawl the Internet to find what's new; c) metasearch engine, where the one query is sent all at once to some of the major search engines, the combined results appearing at the same time. Many search sites combine the features of a directory and a search engine. Each of these search tools has a Help section where you can learn how to get the best results for that particular tool, usually sprinkled with examples to follow. Try advanced searches for more refined and targeted queries. You can try them all, though you will get better results by learning more thoroughly the features of two or three of them.

There's a lot to be said for Yahoo; you can navigate the directory or do a query to find your information. It is the oldest and most popular directory and its linked sites are added by humans, yielding a better grade of returns. You can choose which search engine works best for you by giving them each a try with the same query(ies) and evaluate the relevancy of the results. What do I use the most? So far, in my few years of online research, my absolute favorite is MetaCrawler: it's easy to use and one stop does it all!

Next time, I'll give you a few pointers that have served me well. Surf on!

NOTE: Use the "BACK" function of your browser to return to your point of origin. If you spot a dead link, alert the author by e-mail marked as such in the Subject.