Search Engines

IV. Conclusions

Different engines have different strong points; use the engine and feature that best fits the job you need to do. One thing is obvious; the engine with the most pages in the database IS NOT the best. Not surprisingly, you can get the most out of your engine by using your head to select search words, knowing your search engine to avoid mistakes with spelling and truncation, and using the special tools available such as specifiers for titles, images, links, etc. The hardware power for rapid searches and databases covering a large fraction of the net is yesterday's accomplishment. We, as users, are living in a special time when search engines are undergoing a more profound evolution, the refinement of their special tools. I believe that very soon the Web will evolve standards, such as standard categories, ways of automatically classifying information into these categories, and the search tools to take advantage of them, that will really improve searching. I think it's exciting to be on the Web in this era, to be able to watch all the changes, and to evolve along with the Web as we use it.