Search engines is a program that searches a database of Web Pages for words that you supply and then lists hyperlinks to a page that contain those words. Examples include ; Google, Bing, Yahoo, AltaVista, cuil, Excite, Go.com, AllTheWeb, Galaxy, search.aol, LiveSearch, Lycos, GigaBlast, AlexaInternet, HotBot, Excite, Snap, Ask Jeeves, Go Network, GoTo, WebCrawler, About, Looksmart,

Two Common problems in searching the Web are; Search engines usually return many more hyperlinks than it is possible to access with many of the hyperlinks containing unrelated information. Different search engines find different pages because each engine has its own database of hyperlinks and its own method of determining a match.

Some search provide a list of sites separated into categories Yahoo uses this feature (i.e. Art & Humanities – News & Media – Business & Economy – Recreation & Sports)

Boolean Logic Listing hawaii in the AltaVista search engine return 2,000,000 matches, but the criteria hawaii + resort lowers the number to 300,000.

The “+” (Plus Sign) Can be used to limit a search to only those web pages containing those two words. It is possible to use more than one + To refine a search i.e. florida+hotel+pool Returns only web sites containing those three words (NOTE): don’t use a space between the + and the next word

You can also use the word “and” in place of the + (plus sign) A common search technique is to use several synonyms for a word (i.e. house cottage bungalow) or The word “or” can be used in place of a space

- (minus sign) is used to exclude unwanted web pages. i.e. Shakespeare – play Returns hyperlinks to pages containing the word Shakespeare, but eliminates pages that also contain the word “play”. not Can be used in place of the – (minus sign)

Examples: horse+buggy-carriage tuna salmon-salad recipe chicken-soup university+connecticut-yale