Choose 'search' from the menu, or click on the search button, and enter part of a word. Click 'find' and your browser will take you to the first occurrence of that string in the document. At the other extreme are the many global search engines. These work by creating an index of every Web page that they come across. In between there are local search engines for particular sites, subject gateways, online databases and directories and a host of other tools to help you in your quest for information.
Search engines work by having software 'robots' or 'spiders' that traverse the Web.
They download a page and then follow each link, downloading the next page. Each page is catalogued into one vast index and a simple Web interface allows users to search the index for pages that might contain the information they seek. The query interface usually just has one input line and a 'submit' or 'search' button. Each search engine has its own help page and a few minutes spent learning the particular syntax will be well rewarded. AltaVista , Excite , Galaxy , Lycos and Yahoo are five of the most popular search engines, but there are many more.