In addition, many people and organizations have created specific websites that provide extensive information and hypertext links to other websites all on a particular topic. There are many good examples of these and they can be very helpful when trying to locate information on a single topic. There are also number webliographies and Internet lists that can be useful in your search for information. Probably the most effective way of locating information on the WWW is to use one of the many search engines that are available. There are over one thousand search engines that are available for use and they provide a variety of services and special features in an attempt to get you to use their search engine over any other.
All search engines work by comparing the entered keywords against a database of indexed terms.
There are many factors that influence the results of a search including size of the database, frequency of updates, search capability, design, special features, ranking algorithms, and speed. Because search engines vary so widely, it is very helpful to check any Help files that a search engine has. In there, they will explain the use of Boolean operators, truncation, proximity locators, and other methods for narrowing a search. There are also many Metasearch engines that send searches to several search engines at one time. Since these engines do not support many special features, they are best used for finding obscure items or to see if something is available on the Internet at all.