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"Teaching others a lesson, fix your doubts"
A: What's an Internet search engine?
One way of finding information on the Internet is to use a "search engine". This is an Internet tool which will search for Internet sites containing the words that you designate as a search term. It provides results back to you in the form of links to those sites which have the term(s) you're looking for.
For example, if you wanted to see if there were any math lesson plans on the Internet that you could borrow, you might enter "math and lessons and plans" as your search term. After a brief wait, you would receive a web page with dozens of links to sites which had those particular words somewhere in the site.
It's important to understand that search engines DO NOT search the Internet itself. They DO search databases of information ABOUT the Internet which the company hosting the search engine has developed. Each search engine looks through a different database and that's why they each will reach different results from exactly the same terms. The degree of detail recorded by search engines varies greatly. For instance, some may enter the entire text of the document into a searchable field and others may only enter a short description. This is only one way in which search engines differ. Another difference is in the level of sophistication employed by the search engine when it looks through its database.
B : How does a search engine know about the millions of documents on the Internet?
Search engines do not search the Internet itself, but instead search a database of information about the Internet. Thus, when a document is placed on the Internet, it will only be found by a search engine if information about that document has been recorded in the search engine's database. There are at least two ways a search engine finds out about a document. One way is for the publisher of the document to register it with the engine. If a document publisher wants to ensure that a document is "found" by search engines, then the publisher will usually register with as many engines as possible. The second way that documents get registered is if the search engine company finds it as part of its research routines. Some search engines use "spiders" or search robots to search the Internet and gather information which is subsequently recorded in the engine's database.
C : What are some effective search strategies?
Decide whether a search engine or a subject directory will be the best vehicle. The more specific the information you need, the more likely you will want to use a search engine.
When using a search engine, be as specific as possible. The amount of information now on the Internet can be overwhelming. Get used to more than one search engines. You will develop a preference for a certain engine and it may work well for you but don't forget the other search engines and, from time to time, try another engine or a meta engine to ensure that you have achieved good coverage of the Internet.
D : Why do I need a search engine?
For the same reason you need a card catalogue in a library. There is lots of great and useful information in a library, but it's physically impossible to examine all the books personally. Not even the most indefatigable web-surfer could hyperlink to all the documents in the aptly named World Wide Web. There are billions of pages on the Web. And every minute of the day, folks are posting more.
The search engines and directories help you sift through all those 1's and 0's to find the specific information you need.
E : If it's impossible to examine all the documents on the Web, how do the search engines do it?
They use software programs known as robots, spiders or crawlers. A robot is a piece of software that automatically follows hyperlinks from one document to the next around the Web. When a robot discovers a new site, it sends information back to its main site to be indexed. Because Web documents are one of the least static forms of publishing (i.e., they change a lot), robots also update previously catalogued sites. How quickly and comprehensively they carry out these tasks varies from one search engine to the next.
F : Which search engine is "the biggest"?
They'd all like you to believe they're either "the biggest" or, if they can't possibly claim that, "the best."
Google currently claims to index over 3.3 billion pages, while Alltheweb.com (one of Yahoo's many search properties) claims to index over 3.1 billion. Search engines which demand that site owners pay to have their sites indexed, such as AskJeeves, index fewer pages.
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