Search Engines
Tips for Finding Information Using a Search Engine
What if you know what you're looking for on the web, but you do not have a website address?
You can go to a website called a search engine, type in whatever you're looking for and hit search.
If you were writing a book like this one, you could type in Internet or History of the Internet or World Wide Web. The search engine would give you choices of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of websites you can surf to locate what you're looking for.
It only takes a few seconds for the search engine to do this. Popular search engines include Google (www.google.com) and Yahoo (www.yahoo.com).
In recent years, Google has become such a popular search engine that a lot of people say google instead of search. It is now an entry in English language dictionaries. When you need to search for something, you might say, “I'll google that.”
Tips for Finding Information Using a Search Engine
- Be specific – if you are writing a state report on Florida and want information on theme parks in Florida, try Florida theme parks instead of just Florida.
- Capitalization doesn't matter – if you are searching for information on Barak Obama, you will get the same results with Barak Obama or barak obama or bArAk obAMA.
- Spelling of words does not have to be perfect – if you are unsure of how a word is spelled, type in your best guess. The search engine will respond with a “did you mean,” “we have included,” or similar phrase that will probably show results for the correct spelling of a word.
