Surfin by Slim

Surfin’ by Slim

The internet

1. started by Uncle Sam
2. The Internet was created for exchanging files
3. Terms you should know

Surfing

1. toolbars
2. How to get out of a frame (see finding info. #6)
3. Where to get more information(search engines)

Finding information / Searching for information on the net

1. directories
2. collections of links to websites
3. edited by humans
4. Mr. Schneider’s Links Page
5. search engines
6. uses a special program (called a spider or a crawler) automatically, copying all the data into a huge database
7. you are not searching the Web at all, but the information this engine has gathered
8. meta-search engines
9. They search several search engines and directories at the same time, trying to extract the most relevant hits from all of them.
10. For more complex searches, you should go directly to the relevant search engine. Also note that the metasearch engines will give you but a small part of the results from each individual search engine.
11. advanced search
12. similar sites option for results (more like this)
13. open in new window

Privacy

1. Subscribe to our free newsletter!
2. email lists
3. unsubscribing from email lists
4. junk mail - spam

The Best Search Engines

In this section Pandia presents the best search engines in the world. If you are looking for an all-in-one list of search engines, you should visit our Powersearch gateway.

About the best search engines

In case you did not know: A search engine is not a directory. Directories like Yahoo! or Pandia Plus are collections of links to websites reviewed and edited by human beings like you and me.

A search engine, on the other hand, uses a special program (called a spider or a crawler) to surf the Web automatically, copying all the data into a huge database (an index or list of information).

So when you are "searching" the Web using one of the best search engines, you are not searching the Web at all, but the information this engine has gathered on its computers.

Not one of the various search engines has information that covers the entire Web. Nor are all the results up to date. That is why you should use more than one of the best search engines.

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Google breaks the 3 billion documents barrier

Google launches a new and bigger search engine index and adds fresh news headlines to results.

Google obviously took notice of this, because today it has launched a search engine database containing no less than 3 billion documents, "further extending" according to Google, "the company's position as the world's largest and most comprehensive search engine."

However, careful readers should note that we are no longer counting webpages only here.

2 billion are webpages (25 percent of which are non-English language web pages), 700 million are Usenet posts, and 330 million are images. Out of the 2 billion webpages, some 0.5 billion are not fully indexed, i.e. they are only registered as links from other webpages.

Unlike the Fast search index, however, Google Web Search also offers users the ability to search for numerous non-HTML files such as PDF, Microsoft Office and Corel documents.

"To search our collection of 3 billion documents by hand, it would take 5,707 years, searching twenty-four hours per day, at one minute per document. With Google, it takes less than a second."

Does the inclusion of 3 billion documents improve the quality of search results?

Links to more info:

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