Introduction to Searching the Internet

The Internet provides access to billions of pages of information and an incredible amount of data that is available in many forms including music files, videos, text files, photos & games. All of these web pages reside on servers (fast computers) around the world that are connected to the backbone of the telephone systems usually through a very big fiber optic line that would allow for a thousands or millions of users to view the same web page at the same time. Currently Google is Crawling over 8 billion pages and MSN crawling over 5 billion.

The major search engines like Google have a bank of computers that “crawl” or “search” the Internet for web sites and pages of content. These sites are ranked based on numerous variables like quality and amount of information on the web page, links to that page from other sites & Keyword and Metatag use within the source code.

Search engines also allow for direct submission of web sites. In the past this has always been free but due to the value of search engine positions “There is only one #1 spot on a search engine for any given request” most search engines now charge for commercial listings and some charge for every listing.

There are two basic approaches of finding what you are looking for on the Internet, using a Search Engine such as Google and MSN or a Search Directory like Yahoo, LookSmart or Open Directory. Search Directories are more effective for browsing general topics while Search Engines allow for a more specific search.

Google is the most popular Search Engine and has created a proprietary ever changing method of bringing high quality, current results from a search request. This allows the search engine to return high quality content sites for the users request while combating people who try to outsmart the search engines to always get the first position in the search engine when a request of a certain word or phrase is used.

Another method of searching the Internet is through a MetaSearch Site or MetaCrawlers the send the request to several search engines simultaneously. Since the amount of information you can input is limited compared to a search engine like Google, they are best used to find obscure items. The most popular Meta Sites are WebCrawler, MetaCrawler, Mamma, MetaSearch and the new KartOO visual search engine.