Web Searching Tips and Techniques

There are three components to a search engine: Collection; Database; Search Interface

Collection:

• "Robot", "Spider", or "Worm" wanders, brings back resources, sorts, indexes, and creates the database.
  
  
• Alternately, webmasters can contact search engine owners/operators to add their sites to the database.

Database:

• When using a search engine, you are actually searching the database, not "the Internet".

Search Interface:

• This component is the interface between the end-user and the database.
  
  
• Some engines allow for complex strategy development with Boolean operators, phrase and proximity searching, and nesting. Others are simple keyword searches.
  
  
• Some megatools (meta-search engines) search multiple engine databases simultaneously with a single interface.

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