In recent years, I've been using the Internet, and particularly the World Wide Web, more and more. With a Web search site, I can quickly find even the most obscure tidbit. For a book I'm writing, I wanted to find transcripts of George Bush's speeches from his first year as president in which he poked fun at his penchant for malapropisms when speaking off the cuff. But I typed in a query at the search site HotBot, quickly found the Web site of the Bush library, and using the site's search tool, soon found the passages I was after. Making the most of Internet searching requires that you use the right tool for the task.
Many people find a general-interest search site they like and stick with it.
Some sites, however, are better for some tasks, other sites for other tasks. If you're looking for obscure facts, use a search engine that periodically indexes the Web, creating a list of keywords and other information about the sites it finds. But don't stop with one search engine if you don't initially find what you are looking for. Each search engine uses different technology, leading to different indexes. If you're looking for a general category of information, such as astrophysics, rather than obscure facts, use a Web directory instead of a search engine.