Where to Search


Now that you know how to search, where should you search? There's one obvious choice, and a lot of alternatives.

Google the Most Popular Search Site on the Web

The best (and most popular) search engine today is Google (www.google.com). Google is easy to use and extremely fast, and returns highly relevant results. That's because it indexes more pages than any other site more than 6 billion pages, at last count.

Most users search Google several times a week, if not several times a day. The Google home page, shown in Figure 23.1, is a marvel of simplicity and elegant Web page design. All you have to do to start a search is to enter one or more keywords into the search box, then click the Google Search button. This returns a list of results ranked in order of relevance, like the one shown in Figure 23.2. Click a results link to view that page.

Figure 23.1. Searching the Web at Google.

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Figure 23.2. The results of a Google search.

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Google also offers a variety of advanced search options to help you fine-tune your search. These options are found on the Advanced Search page, shown in Figure 23.3; you access this page by clicking the Advanced Search link on Google's home page. To narrow your search results, all you have to do is make the appropriate selections from the options present.

Figure 23.3. Google's Advanced Search options.

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Another neat thing about Google is all the specialty searches it offers. Table 23.1 details some of these "hidden" search features:

Table 23.1. Google Search Options

Search

URL

Description

Froogle

froogle.google.com

Comparison shopping

Google Answers

answers.google.com

Ask questions of experts (for a fee)

Google Apple Macintosh Search

www.google.com/mac/

Searches for technical information on Apple's Web site

Google Catalogs

catalogs.google.com

Display print catalogs from major catalog retailers

Google Directory

directory.google.com

Editor-selected search results

Google Groups

groups.google.com

Searches Usenet newsgroups

Google Image Search

images.google.com

Search for pictures

Google Microsoft Search

www.google.com/Microsoft.html

Searches for technical information on Microsoft's Web site

Google News

news.google.com

Searches the latest news headlines

Google U.S. Government Search

www.google.com/unclesam/

Searches U.S. government sites

Google University Search

www.google.com/options/universities.html

Searches college and university Web sites


tip

graphics/tipdude_icon.gif

You can also use Google to display maps (search for the street address), stock quotes (enter the stock ticker), answers to mathematical calculations (enter the equation), and measurement conversions (enter what you want to convert).


Other Search Engines

While Google is far and away the most popular search engine, there are lots of other search engines that provide excellent (and sometimes different) results. These search engines include

  • AllTheWeb (www.alltheweb.com)

  • AltaVista (www.altavista.com)

  • AOL Search (search.aol.com)

  • Ask Jeeves! (www.askjeeves.com)

  • HotBot (www.hotbot.com)

  • Lycos (www.lycos.com)

  • MSN Search (search.msn.com)

  • Teoma (www.teoma.com)

  • Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com)

Directories

Not all search sites use search engine technology. Some sites use human editors to evaluate and organize Web pages into a directory. Directories typically offer fewer but higher-quality results than pure search engines.

Among the most popular Web directories are

  • About.com (www.about.com)

  • LookSmart (www.looksmart.com)

  • Open Directory (www.dmoz.org)

  • Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com)

That's right Yahoo! offers both search engine and directory results. (As, for that matter, does Google; the Google Directory uses listings provided by the Open Directory.) You access the Yahoo! directory by browsing through the category listings on the Yahoo! home page; you access the Yahoo! search index by entering a query into the search box at the top of the home page.

Metasearch Engines

There are also a number of search engines that let you search multiple search engines and directories from a single page which is called a metasearch. The top metasearchers include

  • Dogpile (www.dogpile.com)

  • Excite (www.excite.com)

  • GoGettem (www.gogettem.com)

  • Mamma (www.mamma.com)

  • MetaCrawler (www.metacrawler.com)

  • Search.com (www.search.com)



Absolute Beginner's Guide to Computer Basics
Absolute Beginners Guide to Computer Basics (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0789731754
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 253

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