Using Search Engines

The World Wide Web, is made up of millions and millions of “pages” which contain information about every topic you could possibly think of... and then some.

With more pages appearing and disappearing online, we need a way to find/locate information which we are looking for.

In the examples below, we’ll pretend we are looking for information on the American Idol Judge, Paula Abdul.

The Address Bar: If you know the web site address, you use the address bar, and NOT the search engine.

A search engine does the exact opposite of the Address Bar.



Your address bar will look similar to the one in the picture above. Be careful not to confuse your address bar for that of the search engines, or you may not yield the results you are looking for. Certain ISPs such as AOL may have a smaller address bar that is colored slightly different from the one above. It is important you understand that all internet browsers primarily function the same and you can pull up any active web site address directly using your address bar.

To provide you with an example, lets say you need to place a call to a family member. You already know their phone number so you pick up the telephone and you call them... but if you were calling a plumber to have someone fix your sink- you would look up the number in the yellow pages. Think of the address bar as a call to your family member, and a search engine as an index where you could search for local plumbers telephone numbers.

Keep in mind the web site address you type in the Address Bar must be typed with 100% accuracy (much like a telephone number) or you won’t reach the web site you are trying to access.

To use the address bar simply type in the web site address... for example, if you wanted to go to Paula Abdul’s web site, you would type www.PaulaAbdul.com into your address bar.

Press enter or click GO to load the site into your browsers main window.

Search Engines: A huge categorized listing of web sites on the Internet. Not all web sites are listed in the engines.

If you want to get your site listed with the engines, [click here] to learn more.

You use a search engine to locate and a web site address. Just like you would use the yellow pages to find a local plumbers telephone number.

If you type a web site address into a search engines you will not yield any results.
You MUST type a web site address into the address bar.

Using A Search Engine:

Search engines search for web sites using “keywords” and “phrases” such as “Paula Abdul” and “Laker Girls”.

Typing keywords and phrases into the engines will bring the results you are looking for.

There are several ways to search for sites using the engines. Sometimes there is a need to be specific with the engines.

You can type “glasses” into a search engine and end up with over 3,880,000 different results... including sites on stained glass... not much help if we are looking for eye glasses.

If we narrow the search to “eye glasses” we have now narrowed our search to just the sites we are looking for.

We could take it a step further and type in “eye glasses repair” to look for companies who specialize in repairing eye glasses.

Be sure you spell our your searches properly.

Sometimes there is more than one way to refer to a
keyword. Plural and singular words will make a difference in your search results.

Be specific! Don’t type a long phrase and expect to find a match.

Refer to the specific search engine to other ways to increase the effectiveness of your searches, as each engine operates differently.

Here is a list of the most popular search engines.

Find one that you are most comfortable using, and make it your home page.

Click here for more.

Top Search Engines Listing

1. Yahoo!
2. Google
3. Altavista
4. MSN
5. Lycos.com
6. Ask.com
7. AOL Netfind
8. Excite.com
9. Hotbot
10. Webcrawler.com
11. Looksmart
12. WhatUSeek