Finding things 2

Finding things 2
A really short guide to indexed searching

Indexed searching is when you type in a search phrase, and a computer tells you where to look next. Indexed searching can be a good way to find specific information, but it can also be misleading.

The companies that run indexed search sites change their setups continually, making it nearly impossible to keep up with the latest and most useful tools. Below is only some very general advice. For good sources of more current and detailed information, see Finding things 3

1. If you only need one or two keywords for your topic (e.g. "stocks" or "basketball scores"), start with Yahoo (http://yahoo.com).

The chief advantage of Yahoo is its subject trees, where real live human librarians have searched the web for you and listed what are usually good-quality, long-lasting sites under various categories.
A secondary advantage of Yahoo is that it is the most-visited site on the Internet. Anyone who makes a web page knows they have to register it with Yahoo.
Yahoo's chief limitation is that real live human librarians can't even begin to keep up with everything out there.

2. If you can't decide on an appropriate keyword, or if your keyword isn't found in Yahoo, then try one of the big machine-indexed sites.

Altavista (http://www.digital.altavista.com) is the most commonly used and largest site;
Infoseek (http://www.infoseek.com) displays results a bit better.
Hotbot (http://www.hotbot.com) has some user-friendly advanced search features (uses Inktomi technology)

(Note: Yahoo automatically forwards unmatched search terms to an Inktomi search program and displays the results. The results are seamless, and new users often don't know they're using two sites)

The chief advantage of these services is their size; their "spider" programs automatically search the web, analyzing documents for keword frequencies. They can work with keywords and with natural language queries (e.g. both "car guide" and "How can I buy a good used car?").
The chief limitation of machine-indexed sites is that they tend to pick up a lot of irrelevant hits, depending on the topic.

A number of sites use various methods to allow natural language or combined searches. In my limited experience with these, they have been as likely to introduce junk as to help. Ask Jeeves might be a little better, though - try it out.