Just starting your search for information on the Web? Many people make the mistake of believing that "everything" can be found on the web, while others believe that there is nothing worthwhile to be found there. The truth lies somewhere between these two viewpoints.

Search engines are the tools that allow users to access the information available on the Web. They use automated software programs known as spiders, crawlers, or bots to survey the Web and build their databases of resources. Web documents are retrieved by these programs and are analyzed. Data collected from each web page are then added to the search engine index.

When you enter a query at a search engine site, your input is checked against the search engine's index of all the web pages it has analyzed. The best urls are then returned to you as hits, usually ranked in order with the best results at the top. A top search engine will index hundreds of millions of pages, and respond to tens of millions of queries per day. It is important to remember, however, that even the best search engines index only a portion of the websites on the Web, so you are never able to search the entire World Wide Web. Click here for our recommended search engines.

STEPS FOR FORMULATING A SEARCH

1. Clarify your topic. Try to be as specific as possible.
2. Come up with keywords to use in your search query. The more unique and specific your keywords the better. Explore synonyms and related terms (for example: cardiac/heart; smoking/cigarettes/tobacco). Try writing a sentence about what you want to find. For example, "I want to find information about drugs that are derived from rainforest plants." In this case, your key words would be "plants," "rainforest" and "drugs."
3. Select a search tool. Remember that no one search tool indexes the whole Web, so use more than one tool for a more comprehensive search.
4. Refine your search query and/or try another search engine or metasearch engine. Use advanced search techniques (See Advanced Search Tips page.) You may also use advanced search features available on some search engines (HotBot, for example) to delimit your search by date, region, domain, etc.
5. Remember that some information you may need is NOT available on the Web. Use multiple sources including books, periodicals, or even professional individuals and organizations to obtain complete and dependable information.