Five of the most popular search engines at this time are Yahoo, Lycos, Magellan, lnfoseek, and Excite. There are many others. Yahoo is a search engine which seems to be catering mostly to entertainment and mass media information. Lycos and Magellan focus more on professional and technical information, what we might call reference material. This is not to say that any of these search engines are more credible than others, only that these are the main types of information which individuals and organizations are submitting for inclusion in these databases at this time.
Search engines generate revenue from their advertising, like many other segments of the media.
Researching a specific subject on the Internet without a definite framework or procedure can be a time drain, drawing hours away from your career and interactions with family and friends. A skill that is of increasing importance to researchers and practitioners is the ability to use the technology of the Internet to find accurate, reliable information through the World Wide Web. As a professional, you can become proficient in finding Websites and assessing the data and information within them. To improve your searching skills, choose several Web search engines and become thoroughly familiar with them. Experiment with the search links found at these sites, and choose ones that seem to work well with the topics you generally research.