Not all search web sites are created equal. In fact, your search results will vary greatly depending on the type of search web site you use. There are two basic forms of search on the Internet: web directories and search engines.
Web directories work by sorting and organizing web sites by the content or subject matter the site contains. Unlike search engines, humans, rather than computers, create and maintain web directories. A web directory contains information organized into a series of categories and menus and web directory databases are generally much smaller than that of search engines.
Search engines work by using special programs called Spiders that essentially “crawl” through web pages and index the keywords and information from that site in the search engine’s database for future retrieval. A specialized form of search engine, called metasearch, works by gathering information from the databases of multiple search engines. Instead of getting the most relevant results from a single search engine, you will get the most relevant results from several of the leading search engines when you use a metasearch engine.
To help you begin searching, links to several web directories, search engines and metasearch engines are listed below:
Web Directories
Search Engines
MetaSearch Engines
Helpful Links: