What are Search Engines?

Search engines are what make the Internet work for you. In order to find what you are looking for on the world wide web, a search engine is required. Without them things would be very different as it would be difficult to find what you are looking for.

The job of a search engine is to collect as much information about websites on the Internet & make this information readily available to you the user - relative to the words that you type into the search engine. If you want to look for something on the Internet, you would type the name of what you are looking for into the search engine. Depending on what you typed, the search engine scans its index & if it finds a match, it will display the results to you so that you can then make a choice of which result is most likely to give you what you want.

For instance if you want information about a car, you would type the make & model of the car into the search engine. Many results will be found & then you can peruse the details. If you want to find a specific car in a specific geographical location i.e.: Ford Escort, London - you could type Ford Escort London and you will see results from websites that have that information in their text content. If you type "Ford Escort London" into a search engine (with the inverted commas), the search engine will look for the exact phrase that you types. This can be useful and can often save time, but may miss out on any websites that do not have "Ford Escort London" as an exact phrase.

Search Engines are constantly "Spidering" the web, which means that thousands of computers used by Google or Yahoo in various large buildings out there for example, have the sole purpose of looking around the web constantly to find website information which they then add to their index. Once this information about websites that the search engine spiders find is in entered into the index, it can be readily accessed by you the user. This technology is positively overwhelming, extremely clever, very efficient and it works well. From a website creation point of view, there is a time delay after first uploading your new website, before the search results appear on search engines. It is good to see your search results working and the more interesting your website is, the more likely you are to get good search results.

Sometimes it can be a bit daunting if you are searching for a common object & Google shows you 10 million results. Not all good websites appear on the first page, so it is a good idea to look through 2 or 3 to give you an idea of whether or not you need to refine your search. If you want an ink cartridge for your Epson printer for instance, just typing Epson printer ink cartridge is not a good idea as it is too generic and you will doubtless be shown a zillion matches. It is better to type your specific model i.e.: Epson stylus R200 ink cartridge or "Epson stylus R200 ink cartridge" (in quotes). Also if you want to physically go to a supplier to pick up the product - to save on postage, then you could type: Epson stylus R200 ink cartridge London, (assuming that you live in London)