The Internet

Engines gather their databases by utilizing "spiders" or "robots" ("bots") to link different pages in the web by scanning and identifying and pages. The spiders index words in public settings.Web page owners may submit their URLs to search engines for their scanning and possible inclusion into their databases.

The engine scans its indexes of sites and links to match your keywords and phrases with those within these sites. It is important to know that the scan are only executed in a small portion of the actual web.

Search Engines Pros

Users are able to search for information faster and through a wider set of accessibility points. A great amount of information and resources can be located very rapidly. These engines provide easy steps for user who may not be technology inclined.

Search Engines Cons

Search Engines will return thousands of results that may give insufficient or irrelevant information. Users may dredge through a massive amount of options to find results that apply to their needs.

* Search Engines are similar but differ in their options, indexes from software programs, speed, size, relevance, use of keywords or phrases, and/or ranking schemes.

* Rankings results in searches vary according to Search Engines; however, purpose of rankings is to provide the most relevant choices according to keywords used in the indexed pages,

* Search Engines provide the best results when specific word or phrases are used. Information is indexed word by word within a massive amount of options. These are narrowed and presented by their rankings, following or use.

* Search Engines are now utilizing Subject Directories to provide more options of information. Examples of Individual Search Engines are Google and Ask. Gigablast and Yahoo! Search are examples of Subject Directories.

Meta Search Engines search various individual search engines at the same time and present the results in one single site. These are provide the best search results from the Individual engines.

Meta Search Engines results are presented as Singe or Multiple Lists.

* Single Lists present results on one list, with no duplicates,

from various engine searches.

* Multiple Lists present results as separate lists from the

engines used, and may contain duplicates.

Pros: Searches are very fast and give a wide insight to information and where to find it.

Cons: A trend of narrower search bounds, over use of subject directories, and reliance on paid search engines that may be subjective. There are no options for searches for these are driven by the specific words used, and limited its configuration

* Metasearches benefit users through its fast speeds that give an overview of various engines in a simple searches.

* Examples of Meta Searches Engines: Dogpile, Mamma, Vivisimo

Subject Directories are managed by editors. These editors review and select the selections in their directories according to specific criteria, that be be narrowed by their own limitations.

There is a variety of directories such as: general, academic, commercial, portal and vortals. Portals are created by commercial entities as gates to the web,, and link to popular options. Vortals or vertical portals, are subject-based directories. The differences between Portals and Vortals is fast disappearing.

Pros: The format of Subject Directories it's own best feature of categories and sub-categories that offer better quality of information. This provides a narrower set of results.

Cons: Subject Directories store and use page links that may sometimes become obsolete and go unnoticed due to the lack of maintenance.

* Subject Directories act like telephone books that provide an opportunity for browsing through subjective directories of particular fields.

* Portals are Subject Directories that serve as home pages.

Examples of Subject Directories and Portals: Beaucoup, LookSmart, Open Directory Project

Examples of Portals: Excite, MSN Directory, Netscape, Yahoo! directory.

Library Gateways are groups of databases and sites of information that is recommended and organized by specialists such a Librarians. They provide support for research and referencing needs, mostly for academic purposes.

Examples of Library Gateways: Academic Information, Digital Librarian, Infomine, Internet Public Library, Pinakes, WWW Virtual Library

Subject-Specific Databases are also known as: Vortals. These databases focus on a particular subject, and are created by experts, government agencies, researchers, professors, business interests,and individuals focused on a particular subject or field.

Examples of Vortals: Educator's Reference Desk, Expedia, Internet Movie Database, Jumbo Software, Kelly Blue Book, Moster Board, Motley Fool, My Simon, WebMD

A large part of the Web that is not accessible to search engine "spiders", nor it may be indexed by searches, is unknown as the Invisible or Deep Web. It may include pass-protected sites, documents behind certain firewalls, archived materials, and material assembled for certain queries. These materials make about 60 to 80 percent of the actual web, but it exists assumed since they can only be accessed by pointing browsers directly pointed to access to these.

• Use the plus (+) and minus (-) signs in front of words to force their inclusion and/or exclusion in searches.
  
• Use double quotation marks (" ") around phrases to ensure they are searched exactly as is, with the words side by side in the same order.
  
• Put your most important keywords first in the string.
  
  
• Type keywords and phrases in lower case to find both lower and upper case versions. Typing capital letters will usually return only an exact match.
  
  
• Use truncation (or stemming) and wildcards (e.g., *) to look for variations in spelling and word form.
  
  
• Combine phrases with keywords, using the double quotes and the plus (+) and/or minus (-) signs.
  
  
• When searching within a document for the location of your keyword(s), use the "find" command on that page.
  
• Know the default (basic) settings your search engine uses (OR or AND). This will have an effect on how you configure your search statement because, if you don't use any signs (+, -, " "), the engine will default to its own settings.
  
• Know whether or not the search engine you are using maintains a stop word list (see "Stop Words"f it does, don't use known stop words in your search statement. Also, consider trying your search on another engine that does not recognize stop words.

Quick Tips for Boolean Searches

• In Boolean searches, always enclose OR statements in parentheses.)

  
  

  
  
• Always use CAPS when typing Boolean operators in your search statements.

A system of logic designed to produce better search results by formulating precise queries utilizing specific terms, "Boolean" terms.

• BOOLEAN "AND"

The Boolean AND actually narrows your search by retrieving only documents that contain every one of the keywords you enter. The more terms you enter, the narrower your search becomes.

• BOOLEAN "OR"

The Boolean OR expands your search by returning documents in which either or both keywords appear. Since the OR operator is usually used for keywords that are similar or synonymous, the more keywords you enter, the more documents you will retrieve.

• BOOLEAN "NOT" / "AND NOT"

The Boolean NOT or AND NOT (sometimes typed as ANDNOT) limits your search by returning only your first keyword but not the second, even if the first word appears in that document, too.

• NESTING -- WITH BOOLEAN OPERATORS

Nesting, using parentheses, is an effective way to combine several search statements into one search statement. Use parentheses to separate keywords when you are using more than one operator and three or more keywords.

• BOOLEAN LOGIC REDUX

Boolean logic is not always simple or easy. Different search engines handle Boolean operators differently. For example, some accept NOT, while one accepts ANDNOT as one word, others AND NOT as two words. Some require the operators to be typed in capital letters while others do not.

Some search engines use drop-down menu options to spell out the Boolean logic in short phrases. For example, "All of the words" or "Must contain" equates to AND; "Any of the words" or "Should contain" equates to OR; and "Must not contain" equates to NOT.

• IMPLIED BOOLEAN OPERATORS

Implied Boolean operators use the plus (+) and minus (-) symbols in place of the full Boolean operators, AND and NOT. Typing a (+) or (-) sign in front of a word will force the inclusion or exclusion of that word in the search statement.

Similarly, putting double quotation marks (" ") around two or more words will force them to be searched as a phrase in that exact order.

While full Boolean operators are usually accepted only in the advanced search option of search engines, implied Boolean operators are accepted in the basic search options of most search engines.

• PROXIMITY OPERATORS

Proximity, or positional, operators (NEAR, ADJ, SAME, FBY) are not really part of Boolean logic, but they serve a similar function in formulating search statements.

Web pages are organized into "Fields" of information that defines them. These are usually composed of major fields such as: title, domain, host (or site), URL, and link. One may specify the search for these fields in order to expedite results.

TITLE SEARCHING

The title appears in the blue banner at the very top of your browser's window. If you know the subject of a page, it's a good bet that important words describing that subject will appear within its title. Searching for a keyword in the title field, rather than as a keyword alone, will very likely produce more relevant responses.

DOMAIN SEARCHING

To seek information from a particular kind of site, you may choose to limit your field search to one of the current top level domains:

edu -- educational site

com -- commercial business site

gov -- U.S. governmental/non-military site

mil -- U.S. military sites and agencies

net -- networks, internet service providers, organizations

org -- U.S. non-profit organizations and others

HOST (OR SITE) SEARCHING

If you are seeking information that resides on a specific computer or server, you can narrow your search with a "host" or "site" query

URL SEARCHING

Seeking a specific file, you may find it more quickly by choosing a URL search.

LINK SEARCHING

If you have a web page and would like to know who is linking to it, or if you would like to see who is linking to a particular page of interest, you may choose a LINK search.

IMAGE SEARCHING

To find a particular image on the web, you may choose an IMAGE search. You will need to specify the image by name.

Ask supports limited Boolean searching, with recent added advanced search options of Web communities results will produce relevant web pages, narrowed results, and specific resources. It automatically defaults to AND.

Main Page options

• Supports (+) and (-) signs

• Supports double quotes (" ")

Advanced Search Options

• Supports Boolean-type searches using drop-down menus for "all the words," "exact phrase," "Must have," "Must not have," and "Should have."

• Supports limited Boolean queries using operators "AND" and "OR" or "ORR." (Operator must be in all upper case.)

• Allows searching "Anywhere on page," "In page title," and "In URL."

• Provides language search options with matching character sets

• Allows domain or site searches

• Supports geographic regional searches

• Allows searches by date page modified anytime within past two years

Other Options

• Does not support truncation

• No case sensitivity

• Shows "Sponsored" links before listing search results

• Maintains a stop word list; will not search for stop words unless typed as part of a phrase within quotation marks or preceded by the (+) plus sign

A metasearch engine that returns results from multiple sources with one query. It incorporates Vivisimo's unique concept of "clustering" search results by topic, allowing the user to focus on specific categories or related fields of information and to avoid the overload problem of sorting through too many results.

In addition to basic Web searching, Clusty offers users dedicated search tabs for News, Images, Shopping, Wikipedia, Blogs, and Jobs. There is a link to advanced options search page, where you can check boxes allowing you to include results from Web sites not offered by other metasearchers, such as major news media sources and government and business sites.

It searches in Ask, GigaBlast, LookSmart, MSN, Open Directory and Wisenut

Main Page

• Supports those features already supported by the engines used in the search

• Also supports use of (-) for negation and quotes ("") for phrases

• Offers option to open links in "full window," "frame," or "new window"

Advance Page

• Provides option to set results list at 100, 200 or 500 at a time

• Provides option to set "time out" time

• Allows searches by host, language, and file type

• Allows searches to turn off/on filtering feature for offensive content

Other Search Options

• Provides both results lists and "clustered results" by subject

• Prefaces results list with news and sponsored results

• Culls results from a combination of search engines and subject directories

• Translates search requests into each participating engine's syntax

Dogpile searches the Web via the Internet's top search engines (see list below), claiming to fetch, with one single click, the best results from its combined pool of search engine sources. It also displays result links on the right-hand side of the results page for clustering and refining searches even further. Thus, the searcher can drill down into narrower subtopics without having to use the advanced search tools. Dogpile also offers an Advanced search page. It searches in Google, Yahoo!, Ask, MSN, MIVA, LookSmart, and it defaults to “AND”.

Basic Search

• Supports only those features already supported by the engines used in the search

• Displays separate search links for "Images," "Audio," "Video," "News," "White Pages," and "Yellow Pages"

Advance Search

• Supports Boolean-type searches for "all of these words," "the exact phrase," any of these words," or "none of these words"

• Supports searching by language

• Supports searching by date, to find sites updated after a certain date, before a certain date, and between two dates

• Supports searching by domain, to include or exclude results from different domains, e.g., "com" or "edu"

• Provides adult filter, to include or exclude explicit content from searches

Other search options

• Labels individual sponsored results first

• Displays a search refining box on right-hand side of results page ("Are you looking for?") to help cluster and refine searches even further. Another box shows recently completed searches.

Gigablast’s database is small, especially when compared to other popular search engines, but it has some very nice features. One is "Giga-Bits," which displays "related concept listings" at the top of the results page. Also at the top of the results page are additional links to reference pages and related pages that help you narrow and customize your subject search. On its basic page, GigaBlast offers separate search links for the Web and its subject directory. Its index includes PDF, Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, PostScript, and Excel files.Its Advanced page, while lacking several advanced search features, is clean, simple, and easy to use. It defaults to “AND”,and “OR”.

Basic Search

• Supports (+) and (-) signs

• Supports double quotes (" ")

Advance Search

• Supports Boolean-type searches for "all of these words," "this exact phrase," "any of these words," and "none of these words"

• Allows for two phrase searches at the same time with two "this exact phrase" boxes

• Restricts search to specific site, URL, or pages that link to a URL

• Allows site clustering

• Allows up to 5 summary excerpts

• Provides for viewing 10 to 100 results per page

Other Search Options

• Features related concept listings called “Giga-Bits”, Reference Pages, and Related Pages in shaded areas preceding search results

• Provides links to other search engines

• Maintains stop word list; will not search for stop words unless typed as part of a phrase within quotation marks or if preceded by a (+) plus sign

• Offers short answers to simple sentence queries

Google lays claim to being the largest of all the search engines, indexing over 4 billion pages on the Web. It is a straightforward, easy-to-use engine that is noted for its highly relevant results. It returns pages based on the number of sites linking to them and how often they are visited, indicating their popularity. Google also saves the last copy of each page it visits under the "Cached" link. If you're seeking a page that no longer exists, you may still be able to find a copy of it at Google. When searching for a specific Web site, try Google's "I'm feeling lucky" button on the main search page. It searches its own database and defaults to “AND”.

Basic Search

• Supports (+) and (-) signs and double quotes (" ") for phrases)

• Displays search options for images, video, news, maps, and more

• Supports Boolean OR, typed in CAPS (for simple search statements only)

• Maintains a stop word list; does not search for stop words unless they are preceded with (+) sign (e.g., Road +to Perdition) or within a phrase enclosed in quotes

• Displays, when relevant, latest news links above results list

Advance Search

• Supports Boolean type searching with the following phrases: "all of the words," "exact phrase," "at least one of the words," and "without the words"

• Provides option to limit results to different "occurrences" or fields, i.e., title, text, URL, links, language, file format, (e.g., PDF, Postscript, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Rich Text); date range, domain, and adult content, and pages not filtered by license

• Supports customized displays of results from 10-100 per page

• Provides links to "Page-Specific" and "Topic-Specific" pages, Google Scholar, Froogle, all things MAC, BSD Unix, Linux, Microsoft, U.S. Government, and University websites

Other Search Options

• Displays "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, which goes directly to top-ranked site in your query

• Provides link to cached page archives, showing copy of page from the last time Google indexed it

• Provides results from related pages clustered by indentation

• Processes both upper and lower case searches the same, resulting in the same number of hits

• Identifies sponsored links and displays them in pastel colored blocks

MSN Search is now recognized, in its own right, as one of the major search engines on the Web. Its basic search page is designed with a clean, uncluttered look, combining simplicity with a variety of advanced features available under the Search Builder and Settings links. It searches in Inktomi database for Web searches and LookSmart for directory searches. It defaults to “AND” .

Basic Search

• Supports (+) and (-) signs

• Supports double quotes (" ")

• Supports category searching (e.g., news, images, news, local, Encarta, stock quotes, movies, shopping and music) by clicking on hot links or using the drop-down menu

Search Builder

• Supports Boolean-type searches using drop-down menus for "all of these terms," "any of these terms," " this exact phrase," and " none of these terms. "

• Supports searching by domain

• Allows searching for web pages that link to a specific site

• Provides customized personal preference settings to search for pages "updated recently", "very popular", or those that are "approximate" or "exact" matches to the terms being searched

Settings LINK

• Allows language, country, and regional settings and searches

• Provides adult filter

• Displays from 10 to 50 results per page

• Allows user to set personal location

Other Search Options

• Provides information on URLs typed into search box

• Displays "Sponsored" links in pastel colored blocks before showing search results

• Maintains a stop word list; will not search for stop words unless typed as part of a phrase within quotation marks or preceded by a (+) plus sign