SURFING THE WEB WITH SEARCH ENGINES

By Dave Wallace

RIVER BENDER - May 1998

For many years people dreamt of the concept of a universal information database. The WorldWide Web is finally a realization of that dream. Information on any subject is not only accessible to people anywhere but provides links to other pieces of information such that only the most important data can be found quickly. This idea gave rise to "swimming" through data or "surfing the Web."

Surfing the Web has been made easy in recent years by what is referred to as a search engine. Hundreds of search engines exist. They are not something one must buy but simply software programs that reside on the Internet and can be accessed for free. The user types in a few keywords or phrases and waits for lists of hits on the Internet to be displayed. This usually takes only a few seconds. Accessing a selected Web site from the displayed list usually takes a bit longer depending on the site's popularity. It's hard to believe, but sometimes one intentionally selects a Web site in Europe or Asia to obtain information faster because of the time zone difference.

There are many different types of search engines. Most are unique in the way they procure and organize information. It would take a book to describe how they manage to digest millions of Web pages and determine which pages are most relevant to the search words entered by the user. For those interested, however, searches of the Web itself on how search engines work brings up loads of information. The amazing thing about the World Wide Web is that just about anything you can think of can be found once you've learned how to manipulate search engines.

Who pays for search engines? Advertising often pays. For example, Digital Equipment's "Alta-Vista" displays ads every time it is accessed. Universities also sponsor search engines. Carnegie Mellon's "Lycos" happens to be one of the oldest search engines and it was started in 1994, which shows how fast technology is changing on the Internet. Government agencies also have search engines.

Here are a few favorite URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) on search engines:

http://searchenginewatch.internet.com/facts/ This Web page is called "Search Engine Facts and Fun." It lists major search engines, how to use them and how they work.

http://hamrad.com/search.html This Web page is a "Search Engine" for search engines! It looks for search engines that excel in specific topics such as general, adult, automotive, aviation, dining, etc. and can even look for search engines within a given country.

http://www.metacrawler.com/index.html This is my favorite search engine. I like it because it employs five search engines to make a parallel search of the keywords or phrases entered. The five search engines it uses are Alta-Vista, Excite, Infoseek, Webcrawler and Yahoo.

Next month, we'll take a look back in time and talk about how the Internet got started and how it propelled into public usage. This is a favorite subject of mine since I was involved in some of the early days of Internet history.