Search engines excel at searching Web pages, but they are weaker in other areas.
In particular, they don't cover reference material well. If you're looking for information that you normally find in an atlas, dictionary, thesaurus or other reference book, you can waste a lot of time using search engines. Like other search engines, you type in words or phrases of interest. Behind the scenes, xrefer searches an impressive list of reference material. You'll find a full list on the xrefer Web site, and they expand this list regularly.