Search engines have been developed to select the information needed from the vast amount of material on the Internet. If you have heard the names Alta Vista, Lycos, Hotbot, Infoseek or Excite you have heard the names of some of the most widely known search engines. The companies which run them have set up computers to search automatically for the words requested by the user.

When these computers roam the Web they are making a rough attempt to "index" or "catalog" it. Unlike a catalog, however, which attempts to include all of the materials in a library, search engines do not cover all of the material on the Web.

In fact a recent study found that each search engine covers only about 10%-15% of all that is out there in cyberspace!

Search engines are much more flexible than the information databases that are used for academic study, and can be searched in a variety of ways. Techniques to ensure you get the best results from search engines will be addressed in the following pages. Similar techniques for searching academic databases, such as those supported by the KCVL will be addressed in later units.