Searching the Web is both easy and challenging. One gigabyte equals 1,024 megabytes. The sheer amount of information available on nearly any topic can leave a first-time web researcher feeling quite overwhelmed.
Search engines increase our ability to access information.
It can take months for a search engine to index new or modified pages. In their 1999 study Lawrence and Giles claim that the overlap in coverage among search engines is relatively low and they recommend using metasearch engines to increase coverage. The 1999 search engines have significant limitations that impact on both efficiency and effectiveness. Link Popularity , the number of pages linked to your site, is used by many search engines to select pages for indexing. Web researchers should understand how search engine bias influences search results.