NWE Help: Web: Searching: Intro

There are three main types of search tools which you can use to look for things on the Internet.

a "robot" or "crawler" powered search engine like Altavista or Hotbot, which "crawls" the web to build search databases from page content.
a subject index, like Yahoo, which organizes URLs submitted into categories by web users.
meta-search engines, which use a combination of different databases and methods--they "search the search engines."

Most search tools ask you to enter a set of keywords, and then return a list of possible "hits" based on your keywords. Sometimes you can refine a search to get closer to what you're looking for. It's important to read the help for any search engine you use a lot-- you can save a lot of time by making effective queries.

Each search tool's database of web pages is assembled with different tools and updated with varying frequency. Identical searches may return different results in different places. If you don't find what you're looking for in one place, try another.

Though this directory says "Web," these tools allow you to search the entire Internet--searching the web is only the beginning. We've got links to search tools for FTP sites, email addresses, Usenet, and other lesser-known parts of the Net.

If you're unsure what to use, try this link to Google. If you'd like to select from our list of search engines, just choose the link below and you'll be able to get started.