Search engines are databases of information about Web pages. The information is collected by computer programs called Web robots, crawlers, or spiders, that "crawl" around on the World Wide Web and bring back information about what has been found. Click to see a picture of how search engines work.

The interface will always include a place for you to type in your search terms. Google has a very simple search interface, pictured here:

You just type in your search terms and click on Google Search. (If you click on I'm Feeling Lucky, you will be directed to the Web page Google's computer programs think is the best for your topic.)

Sometimes the search interface is more complex. This is likely to happen when the search engine also offers other services, such as access to weather sites, stock information, and so forth. Search engines of this type are known as portals. Excite (pictured below) is a portal.

Can you find the search box, and the Search button?

How are the search engines different from each other?

  • Size -- of the major search engines, AltaVista says it indexes about 1 billion Web pages; Google says it covers 3.3 billion
  • What they include -- all include Web pages, but what else? Some index Word documents , PowerPoint Presentations, multimedia, etc., on the Internet; others don't.
  • How you search them -- all the major search engines require that you put phrases in quotation marks to keep the words together, e.g., "Santa Cruz." But they differ in other search rules.

To get to a list of the major search engines, with brief descriptions:

  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage <http://libwww.cabrillo.ed> If you are at an Information Workstation in the Library, just click on HOME towards the top of the screen.
  2. Click on Search the Internet [fourth icon down on left]
  3. Click on Search engines.

Learn more:

How to get to this page on the Internet

  1. Go to the Cabrillo College Library homepage <http://libwww.cabrillo.edu>
  2. Click on Library & Internet Instruction (3rd icon from the bottom, on left)
  3. Click on 1. Web Workshops for Fall 2003

Topsy N. Smalley last rev. 10/16/03