A search tool is a computer program that performs searches to access Web sites and retrieve information. Each search tool is owned by a single entity, such as a person, a company, or an organization, which operates it from a master computer. When you use a search tool, your request travels to the tool s Web site. There it conducts a search of its database and directs the response back to your computer. The search method is the way a search tool requests and retrieves information from its Web site.
Web site comprises a store of information called a database.
This database has links to other databases at other Web sites, and the other Web sites have links to still other Web sites, and so on. Each search tool has extended capabilities by means of a worldwide system of links. Types of Search Tools Directory Search Tool searches for information by subject matter. It is a hierarchical search that starts with a general subject heading and follows with a succession of increasingly more specific sub-headings. The search method it employs is known as a subject search.