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Search Engines

Search engines are used to search for resources on the Internet. When selecting a search engine, be aware that each search engine varies by:

    1. the amount of the Internet being searched and

    2. the type of sources being retrieved

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There is no search engine that will search the entire Internet at once. The most popular web search engines may only cover up to 25% of all the content that is available. Often, information about coverage can be found in a search engine's Help or About Us sections.

[Hotbot About Us]


There are many search engines available on the web. Here is a sample list:

  • Alta Vista™


  • Excite®


  • HotBot


  • InfoSeek-Go


  • Lycos


  • WebCrawler™


  • Google
Search Engine Tips


Always look for the Help button on the search engine you select. Useful search features and options may be explained there.

Remember that many search engines on the web use free-text indexing. This means that whatever search terms are entered are looked for anywhere in the entire document. As a result, hundreds, even thousands, of documents can be retrieved, but many may be irrelevant or only peripherally related to the search topic.

For example, a search on the topic "space walk" may pick up irrelevant items such as the ones below:

[space walk exampl 1]

[space walk example 2]

There are a number of ways you can increase the precision of your search:

  • search a specific phrase


  • search a specific field


  • require/exclude specific words or phrases


These are the same kind of search strategies used in database searching (covered in chapter 3). Refer to the search engine's Help button for specific search tips.

Chapter 4, Page 7

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