|
What is the World Wide Wed?
Although many people use the terms Internet and World Wide
interchangeably, it is important to note that the World Wide Web
is only a subset of the internet. The World Wide Web is a group of
more than 800 million Web pages that use the same language to
speak to our computers. The Web has become the most popular area
on the Internet because it can transmit text, images, audio and
video to millions of users through a standardized method. The
World Wide Web is quickly absorbing the other media that live on
the Internet, including gopher and email. Yet services such as
Usenet will remain for some time.
What is a search engine?
A search engine is a tool for finding information on
the Internet. Many search engines use the same content database as
their competitors, yet no two search engines are exactly the same.
Each presents its content in a different format with a different
interface, and each updates its information in a unique manner.
Directories
Directories are categorized lists of sites compiled by either
robots or human editors. They are ideal for helping you narrow
down your topic or for finding general information on a broad
range of subjects. The Lighthouse Square directory is compiled
by human editors who review each site and describe its content.
Lighthouse Square is different from search sites like HotBot,
AltaVista and Northern Light. Lighthouse Square is not a search
engine we are a Web directory that contains a large collections of
reviewed and quality sites. Web directories like Lighthouse Square
and nonedited engines may look the same, but each is good in
finding different types of information. Crawlers
When people talk about search engines, they are generally
referring to what are known as Web crawlers or spiders. These are
software programs that regularly scan the internet and index the
contents of individual Web sites. They then add those links to
their database without examining the content. None index the
entire Web - the largest claims 25 percent coverage - and some may
give you better results than others. Spiders crawl the Web for
results to your queries. These are perfect for hard-to-find
information and when you need a large database of results. Be
careful, however - with broad or general topics these engines will
return results in the hundreds of thousands. Try using www.altavista.com
or www.northernlight.com
as examples of search engines that use software spiders to index
the contents of individual Web pages. Nonedited search engines
are best for finding specific facts or obscure topics. Because
they complement each other, directories and nonedited engines
often work together in an attempt to provide users with a better
search experience. Metasearch Engines
Metasearch engines collect their results from multiple search
engines and list them on one page. When you do a metasearch, it's
like using multiple search engines at the same time. Metasearch
engines like www.metacrawler.com
and www.dogpile.com
don't maintain an index of their own but instead issue search
requests to groups of other Web-search sites. When HotBot,
AltaVista or others return their results, the metasearch site
collects them on a single Web page for display. This is a
timesaving technique that comes in handy when you don't want to
spend all day going to different search engines. Natural-Language
Search
Natural-language searches allow you to post a query in the form of
a question like, "When was the first shuttle launch?" To
conduct a specific search in the form of a question, instead of by
keyword or Boolean operators (which vary widely from site to
site), use a natural-language system like www.askjeeves.com
or www.electricmonk.com.
These are useful for beginners or for kids because they don't
require computer jargon.
|
