Search Engines and Directories: What are they?

Search engines: When you ask for information on a particular subject, a search engine scans information that it has already gathered into a database.   The matches it finds come up on the screen with the most relevant ones first - so you shouldn't have to trawl through hundreds of possibilities.  The information is gathered continuously by a process known as crawling because it must be done at a leasurely pace to ensure that response times on the site currently being examined are not adversely affected.  Webmasters can register their sites with search engines to ensure they are covered and to specify a particular set of key words to be associated but search engines eventually get round to all pages that are linked from another.  There is much competition to register web sites in such a way that they come near the top of the search results.  Webmasters who do not get their sites near the top of the league table are a little like football team managers who whose teams gets demoted - they lose their jobs.

Search directories have been put together by people who have sorted sites into categories and perhaps even reviewed them. Most search facilities now combine the two approaches, which makes things easier. The secret in searching is to be patient and think where first and what second.   If you want to read a book on flowers  you start by finding a site about gardeniing.  Find a likely site and then find what you want within the site.  

Or just be inventive: If all else fails, invent the name of the site you would like to find and hope for the best.  If you just type in www.something.com many Internet Browsers will automatically try other suffixes if .com fails (if the option is set accordingly).  Generally, .com is commercial american, .co.uk is commercial british, .gov.?? is local or central  government, .org.?? is non-profit making, .ac.?? or .edu.?? are academic institutions.  The final ?? is the country code which can usually be worked out - uk for United Kingdom, nz for New Zealand, au for Australia, fr for France, and so on.