Many
search engines have a "simple" search engine page for
novice users and an "advanced" pages for more experienced
searchers.
In
some cases, being able to control how a search engine searches
for a keyword or keywords may greatly improve your results. The
"simple" search engine pages may or may not offer any
of the more advanced controls for using advanced search techniques.
Even the "advanced" pages may offer only limited ways
for users to control the search engine. When using an engine unfamiliar
to you it is often best to start by reading the "help"
page to learn how you may be able to control the engine.
In
addition to ways of controling how a search engine works you may
also be able to restrict the search to
specific areas and/or control how the results are displayed.
NOTE:
Many search sites are actually powered by other search engines
- AOL uses Google, Lycos uses Alltheweb, Hotbot will use either
AllTheWeb.com, Google, Inktomi or Teoma (you choose).
Metasearch
engines
Some search "engines" like Webcrawler
and Metacrawler
allow you to search using a number of different search engines
combined. Because you can use several different search engines
from these single sites, the ways you can control the searches
are limited to very simple options - the ones that all of the
engines have in common.
Specialty
search engines
Some search engines are geared to finding specific information
or only searching a specific site. The search engine on the medical
information site WebMD
only searches for webpages on its own site. The search engines
Froogle (powered
by Google) and MySimon
and are shopping serarch engines. Google has a search engine (goups.google.com)
that will allow you to search through Newsgroups.
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