SEARCH ENGINES
What are they and why would I use one?
The three major search engines are www.google.com; www.yahoo.com and www.aol.com. There are many others, but Google seems to be the best and many search engines use google as part of their data base. The different search engines send out little robots looking for specific words or phrases into a web site and sends that information back to the data base, along with the "url" or address to find the information on a specific page. The internet has taken the place of (I can't remember the name!) encyclopedias. I literally had to ask my daughter, "what are those reference books called - you know, salesmen go door to door" ... oh yeah, encyclopedias! Any time you watch a movie and can't remember the name of an actress or the year it was made, simply "google it". You can narrow your search or expand your search as you go. By this I mean, I can type "male german sheppard" and the search engine will come up with many sites that have this terminology in their site. The most relevant site will be first, at least it is the most relevant according to Google and Aol, as stated below. We're #1 on Google and have been for almost 7 years! You type to the left of the search button, where I typed "san felipe baja". I use a program called "Grab It" to take pictures of different pages I'm on.
After the page comes up, you can search within a search and type in "black german sheppard dog" or "puppy german sheppard". I don't own a cookbook and if I want a recipe, I simply type "apple pie recipe" and I get thousands of sites with recipes for apple pie. If I want to contact the department of motor vehicles in a certain state, I type, for example, "iowa motor vehicles" and usually the state's site will come up first. Looking for information on the history of pizza? Simply type "pizza history" or do you want to see whom Lena Horne was married to simply type "lena horne bio" and sit back and read. With internet in most homes, it's impossible to say "I don't have anything to read". If I could, I'd spend most of my time reading the vast amount of information available on the world wide web. This is Yahoo.com's search result:
When you have finished your search and are on the page showing the different web sites you can go to, at the top you may find what is called "Sponsored Links". When you see "Matching Sites", these are numbered as to relevancy, one being the most relevant. From AOL's search
Sponsored Links are listings that have been purchased by
companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms
and related content.
These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by third parties and
not endorsed by AOL.
Matching Sites
These results may contain objectionable material not endorsed by AOL. Matching
Sites are Web sites, listed in order of relevance (listings with the highest
relevance appear first). These listings are administered, sorted and maintained
by Google, AOL's search partner. For information about how Google sorts these
listings, go to http://www.google.com/about.html and click on the "Our
Technology" link.
In addition, news stories related to your search may appear in the listings.
These results are supplied by CNN, a Time Warner company. On AOL we are the
first two sites.
Crawler-based engines send crawlers, or spiders, out into cyberspace. These crawlers visit a Web site, read the information on the actual site, read the site's meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects to. The crawler returns all that information back to a central depository where the data is indexed. The crawler will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed, and the frequency with which this happens is determined by the administrators of the search engine. If you'd like to learn more about them, try this site I found through google.
http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2003/HowWebSearchEnginesWork.asp
Remember, if you don't know it, google it!