Search Engines

The internet without a search engine is the same as a reference book without a table of contents. � Imagine a great dictionary or encyclopedia which is not printed in alphabetical, or any other particular order. You`d be overwhelmed thumbing through 1,000 + pages looking for one piece of information with no clue as to where it was located. � With the latest guesstimate of websites available in the world being in excess of 5,358,642 in the year 2003, and more being created daily, a source which organizes them for us is absolutely essential.

� That`s what a search engine does. � It stores the location of all the facts, fiction, photos and text published on the information super highway and takes us to it upon request.

The search engines available to us currently number in the high double digits and that`s not including private search engines which organize and locate information for specific websites.

Some of the more popular public search engines are Lycos.com, which uses a little dog as its mascot/logo. � The imagery is very good really. � The ��retriever�� digs up information like a buried bone and brings it back to us on command. ��

Then there is AskJeeves.com which is associated with a butler tending to our every need. � This search engine allows us to type what we are looking for in question format and responds with an ample amount of web addresses related to key words within our request.

AllTheWeb.com is yet another whose name clearly defines the area it will search for you. � This engine allows you to narrow your search by placing what you need into categories of news, pictures, video, audio or run-of-the-mill World Wide Web content.

Some of the conglomerates in Internet Service Providers like MSN.com and Yahoo.com are also search engines. � Until fairly recently, they deferred to other sources to perform searches for their customers. � Yahoo used Google until just last year when they became an independent, and very capable, search engine themselves.

Google.com is by far considered the largest, and quite possibly the best, search engine available to date by popular opinion. � In fact, the word Google has become a verb in the English language. � Who among us has not said, ��I`ll Goo