How to find the site you need?

There are literally hundreds of 'search engines'. A search engine is a program that finds anything you specify. The program will belong to a certain site that runs the program and displays the results.

Don't be too concerned with the number of search engines to choose from, there are a few 'big names' that will hold links to a vast range of sites, and many others that will be more specialised, and hold links to sites containing a certain type of information.

There are also sites that use all of the big name search engines for you and list the results by site, or if you prefer, you can download free software that can perform searches at multiple sites. Like all things on the Internet, there is a lot of choice. Multiple site searches are definitely the ones to use for general information.

Once you have downloaded the software, or gone to a search site, you must enter 'Keywords' for the search. Keywords are just a number of words that are associated with whatever you are searching for. If you want to find some sites that give you information about World War 2 aircraft, for example, you could enter War, Aircraft, Plane, Spitfire, Hurricane, ME 109, P 51 etc. as your keywords.

Whichever search facility you use it is advisable to read their help page. There you will find information on how to change the way that the search engine uses the keywords. Whether the search engine assumes that you want 'all', or 'any' of the keywords found. If it assumes 'any' then the list of documents found will increase with each added word, but if it searches for 'all' the words then the list will be reduced with each new word.

It is best to specify a number of words and that all the words are present. The number of documents that the big name search engines can find is huge. For example a search for 'Barbie' resulted in over 630,000 documents being found.

The best way to find the capabilities of the various search engines is to experiment with them. They are free to use and a powerful tool.

Once you have found a site that contains the type of information that you are looking for, then check their 'links' page. Almost all Web sites will carry links to other sites that specialise in the same subject matter. This can be as useful as the search engines.

Another place to check for links are the 'portal' sites. These are sites that are set up to be entry points to the Internet. They often have up to date news, Web-based email facilities, games, general information, community pages etc. Most will carry a large range of links to interesting sites. Your ISP site will be a portal, and there are many others.