While there is some excellent information available it is very difficult to find as anyone can publish on the Web. Various tools exist to assist in locating the information being searched for and these can be divided into subject directories, search engines and meta-indexes. These are discussed below with particular reference to search engines. They are structured hierarchically and often provide a search option. As Web sites are collected by people there is some form of control as to what appears in a subject directory.
Subject directories are an excellent method of locating general information on the Web.
While they can never include all Web pages due to human controls, they are still an excellent starting point to find out some of the types of resources available in a particular field on the Web. Search Engines Search engines use robots to collect information from the Web. They are therefore larger than a subject directory and generally contain irrelevant information whatever your search may be. This paper concentrates on the search module as this is what the client interacts with when using a search engine. Search engines are continually evolving and it may be that some of the information provided may be obsolete within the month.