Web Searching Tips and Techniques

Search engines vary as to the:

• number of sites they index. Not even the biggest search engines come close to searching the entire web.
• parts of each website they index (varies from URL and title to full-text of every web page).
• order of the results list. Some engines look at the number of pages that link to the site and incorporate this "popularity" component into the mix. Some accept payment for prominent placement in the list.
• frequency of updating or "refreshing" the database.
• versatility and complexity of the interface.

See Definitions of Search Functions for a brief description of these features that add versatility.
The following compare many of these search engine features:

• Recommended Search Engines: Tables of Features
  Part of a Searching Tutorial from the UC Berkeley Library
• Features of Meta-Search engines
  Meta-Search engines simultaneously search multiple search engine databases.

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