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What are Search Engines?
A search engine is a web site that uses software to browse the
Internet. A search engine will retrieve a listing of World Wide
Web sites related to the key words you specify.
How Do You Choose a
Search Engine?
There are dozens
of search engines to choose from. It is a good idea to become very familiar
with at least two search engines. Here are some factors you should consider
when choosing a search engine:
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Size of database
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Number of relevant hits you receive
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Quality of hits you receive
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Sophistication of searches permitted
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Ease of use
How Do Search Engines Work?
Whenever you search the web
using a search engine, you're asking the engine to scan its index of sites
and match your keywords and phrases with those in the texts of documents
within the engine's database.
What are the Pros
and Cons of Search Engines?
PROS:
Search engines provide access to a fairly large portion of the publicly
available pages on the Web, which itself is growing exponentially. Search engines are the best
means devised yet for searching the web.
CONS:
The sheer number of words indexed by search engines
increases the likelihood that they will return hundreds of thousands of
responses to simple search requests. Some of these documents will not be
relevant to your topic and they might return lengthy
documents in which your keyword appears only once.
Are Search Engines
All the Same?
Search engines use selected
software programs to search their indexes for matching keywords and phrases,
presenting their findings to you in some kind of relevance ranking. Although
software programs may be similar, no two search engines are exactly the same
in terms of size, speed and content; no two search engines use exactly the
same ranking schemes, and not every search engine offers you exactly the
same search options. Therefore, your search is going to be different on
every engine you use. The difference may not be a lot, but it could be
significant. Recent estimates put search engine overlap at approximately 60
percent and unique content at around 40 percent.
Search Engine Practice Tools to Use with
Search Engines
Search connectors are
tools that make searches easier. Such connectors are AND and OR.
Learn more about them on the "Search Connectors page below.
Search Connectors
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