1. Searching the Internet
Search Tools

2. There are three types of search tools:
Search engines
Web directories
Meta-Search engines

3. Web Directories (e.g. Yahoo, Lycos)
Web sites are organized into categories and sub-categories (Example: Science, Animals, Mammals, Marsupials, Kangaroo)
All web sites have been reviewed and approved by humans
Creators of web sites would submit their URL to the directory

4. Web Directories Pro Con Links you find are very relevant
Only accessing a small portion of the web

5. Search Engines (e.g. Google, AltaVista)
Searches the web using an automated computer program
Google – uses programs called spiders
Spiders crawl from web site to web site through the links
Spiders can look through 100 pages per second
Keeps track of words on scanned pages
Stores relevant sites / pages in database for future searches

6. Search Engines
Pro
More likely to pull up recent web sites on the topic
Lots of sites are listed
Con
Many sites listed are irrelevant

7. Meta-Search Engines (e.g. Vivisimo, Dogpile, Ask)
Uses a combination of multiple search engines and directories at one time to optimize web searching (you are casting a wider net)
Sometimes they list the top ten results from the different tools that were used
Con – you might have to search through many irrelevant sites!