Search Tools

So now I have an idea just how to find information, what tools can I use to research my queries?

You can use a search engine, a directory, or a metasearch engine. A search engine is a web browser to use as a general all purpose search tool. Google, Yahoo!,  and Bing(Microsoft) would be good examples of search engines. Simply type in a request in the text box, hit search and a list of hits will be ready for you shortly. Search engines have a unique feature called a Web Crawler, bot, or spider.This feature searches the internet for URLs that are specific to your request, and then adds them to an index for easier retrieval. These indexes from the Web Crawler are similar to the index in the back of a book.

Another rather useful and interesting search device, is called a metasearch engine. If you do not need to use any specific features of a particular search engine, you can use a metasearch engine to obtain a greater amount of information from several sources. Metasearch engines use webcrawlers to find links to various sites and compiles an index. This would be like using several search engines at once.

However, before search engines and metasearch engines there were directories. These directories are compiled by humans and a hierarchical list organized by category. According to the book "Discovering the Internet" 3rd edition, by Shelly, Napier, and Rivers of Shelly Cashman Series, the two Stanford University students who first came up with this idea went on to create the company Yahoo!. Jerry Yang and David Filo created a directory of interesting sites on the web, and soon there friends wanted them to share the list.