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Searching the Web
Most people will have heard of the Google search
engine, but there are hundreds of others.
How do
they work?
I use the ones below to find information on the
Web
World
Wide Web Sites
I find ixquick easy-to-use and gives uncluttered
results.
You can use Ixquick directly from this page.
UK Web Sites Only
Maps
Address
Phone numbers
Business & Residential
Reverse phone number look up
Dictionary
How do they
work?
The World Wide Web contains a vast amount of
information (billions of pages), which makes
finding what you want on your own exceedingly
difficult.
Search engines (Google Yahoo, etc) work
like an index in an ordinary book. They
regularly, daily to monthly, look at every web
site and list those that they think might be
useful. When you use them they look
through the pages they have indexed and give you
a link and brief description of the pages that
contained the words you entered in the search
box. Their costs are usually paid for by
sponsors and adverts (this may lead to biased
results or even exclusion of their competitor's
sites).
Example;
If you typed in "Somerset" they will find all
the pages that they have listed that contained
the word "Somerset", and they are likely to find
many millions of pages, today 31,699,396!
(not very useful!)
Adding more words to the search by typing in
"somerset dyslexia association" with the quotes
they search only for pages containing the phrase
"Somerset Dyslexia Association" (today 30).
But without the quotes most search for
"Somerset" "dyslexia" and "association" as
separate words in any order of anywhere on the
page, (today 4,160)
so remember to use the quotes when you
are looking for a phrase.
"Ixquick" is a rather different search
engine (meta search), instead of keeping its own
list this one uses several other search
engines. It only returns the top ten
results from each search engine, with very few
adverts or sponsored sites. I always use
this one first as I think it is very clearly
laid out, quick and easy-to-use.
For convenience I have put a Ixquick search
engine box in the
links
above.
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