Introduction
Search engines are complied by a computer programs called spiders. The spider travels across endless web pages, indexing the pages into its database as it goes. Unlike directories, search engines will index the entire text of a document and not just the title. This is called full-text indexing.
This information and its corresponding links are retrieved when you enter keywords or phrases into the form of a search engine home page. Each search engine has a different way of storing the information in its database. That is why when you use a search engine, what might turn up as the first result in one search engine could be the fifth result in another. Try and become familiar with a couple of search engines and their workings.
Examples of Search Engines...
www.google.ie
(This is one of the most popular extensive search engines. It permits you to search web pages from Ireland or from throughout the world. It also has the advantage of having little advertising).
www.scholar.google.com
(Google Scholar is an academic search engine permits you to search for scholarly work, including academic peer-reviewed papers, theses, books; or publications from professional societies or academic publishers).
www.altavista.co.uk
(Similar to Google, this is an extensive search engine that usually provides you with plenty of possible answers to your search queries).
www.webcrawler.com
(Webcrawler is a search engine that functions by transforming accumulated results from other major search engines onto one search results page).
www.lycos.co.uk
(This is another search engine that also provides search categories [similar to a directory], and linked commercial features on its homepage).
www.wisenut.com
(Wisenut is another example of a search engine that offers you the opportunity to run a detailed search on Web resources for a particular topic).
