Obviously, you want your Web site to be more popular than Britney Spears and it can be, if you promote it well. Search engines, such as Yahoo!, Lycos, Google, and the rest of them, are always scouring the Internet and recording information about Web pages. Individual search engines work a little differently: Some record information about every word on a Web page and some look only at titles and headings. The search engines store this information in giant databases. When you conduct a search of the Internet, you’re really searching a database that the search engine you’re using maintains. Obviously, you should do all you can to help search engines find and index your Web site. Most search engines invite you to submit your Web site for inclusion in their databases. Crawler-based search engines usually request the URL; directory-based engines usually request more information. You must pay a fee to submit your Web site to search engines whose names are marked with an asterisk in the table. Searchengines.com offers a superb explanation of search engines, how they work, and what they are. The Web site is located at this address: www.searchengines.com. Finding Your Way with Google Google is just about everybody’s favorite search engine. A search engine, in case you didn’t know, is a Web site where you can begin searching the Internet. What makes Google so popular? For one thing, the Google Web page is clean and easy to understand and use. Google is also good at finding material you’re looking for. And you can also use Google to look for images, news, and newsgroup discussions.

Basic Search Techniques with Google

Later in this article, I explain how you can use Google without visiting the Google Web site by installing the Google toolbar in your browser. Without the toolbar, go to this address to start an Internet search with Google: www. google.com. Whether you start at the Google main page or the Advanced Search page, you choose an area to search, enter your search terms, and click the Google Search button to conduct your search. These are the different areas you can search:

-  Web: Search for terms on Web pages.

-  Images: Search for graphics on Web pages.

-  Groups: Search newsgroups on usenet.

-  Directory: Google organizes Web sites by content in its directory. You can drill into the directory, starting with broad terms and seeking out ever narrower ones until you reach your goal.

-  News: Google monitors more than 4,000 Web news sites. This is an excellent place to search a news topic in many different newspapers and news sources. After the search is complete, Google presents you with a list of Web pages with a sentence or two of text from each page. Click the page you want to visit. By clicking a Cached link on the Google search results page, you can go to a copy of the Web page that Google maintains. The advantage of doing this is twofold. First, sometimes these copies still exist after the original Web page has been taken down. Second, your search terms are highlighted in the cached copy. This makes finding the material you’re looking for easier.

Conducting a Good Search

The key to a good search is using search terms wisely. Here is some advice for conducting fruitful searches:

-  Use precise terms. As best you can, enter terms as precisely as you can. For example, a search for Triumph TR6 is more likely to get the results you want than a search for Triumph.

-  Enter the most meaningful terms first. If you look for tours Boston you’ll get a different result list than you get for Boston tours. The first focuses on tours of Boston; the second on Boston itself, with tours being secondary.

-  The more terms you use, the more specific the results are. The best way to narrow down a search is to load it down with search terms. For example, tours Boston south side focuses on tours of the south side of Boston.

-  Use OR searches to tell Google that either of two search terms is okay. Sometimes an OR search produces better results. For example, searching for tours Boston OR Cambridge finds tours of either city. To enter an OR search on the Advanced Search page, enter the words in the With at Least One text box.

-  Search with a specific phrase. To search for a specific phrase, either enclose it in quotes, or, on the Advanced Search page, enter it in the With Exact Phrase text box. For example, tours “Paul Revere’s House” finds tours of that specific place.

-  Use the plus sign if you need to include common words. Commonly used words such as “how” and “when” are excluded from searches, but if you want to include them, place a plus sign (+) before the word.

-  You can exclude pages from results. To exclude pages, place a hyphen (-) before the word you want to exclude, or, on the Advanced Search page, enter the word or words to exclude in the Without the Words text box. Excluding words is a great way to cut down on the number of Web pages a search turns up. You can combine the different search tricks. For example, tours Boston OR Cambridge -“Paul Revere” finds Web pages about tours of Boston or Cambridge that do not mention, and presumably do not take visitors to, Paul Revere’s house. By the way, capitalization doesn’t matter when you enter search terms. You can save yourself a little time by entering everything in lowercase: tours boston or cambridge -“paul revere”.

Advanced Searching Techniques

On the Advanced Search page you can search for Web pages in a certain language, by date of last modification, for search terms by location on Web pages, and in specific Web sites. Google also offers a handful of advanced search operators. To enter these operators, you enclose them in square brackets ( [ ] ), with the operator name first, a colon (:), and then the search term that the operator acts upon. For example, [link: www.google.com] finds all Web pages with hyperlinks to the Web site at www.google.com.

Installing the Google toolbar

To install the toolbar, go to the Web site at this address: http://toolbar. google.com. Then click the Download Google Toolbar button. You will be asked if you want to disable or enable advanced features. If you enable the advanced features, you can see a page’s rank on the Google toolbar when you surf to the page. However, to gather this ranking information, Google tracks users’ surfing habits. What the advanced features question really asks is whether you consent to sending information about your surfing behavior to the Google database. Google uses the information to compile data about people’s surfing habits. To turn off the Google toolbar, right-click any empty place on any toolbar and deselect the Google option. To remove the Google toolbar, do it as though you were removing a computer program and start in the Control Panel.

Using the Google toolbar

The Google toolbar is essentially a way to search with Google without visiting the Google Web site:

-  Google menu: A drop-down list for going directly to Google.com and its various pages.

-  Search Terms text box: A text box for entering search terms.

-  Search Web: A drop-down list for searching for images, news, and so on.

-  News: Click this button to go to the Google News Web site.

-  PageRank: The page ranking (if you enable the advanced features of the toolbar).

-  Blocked: Click this button to keep pop-up ads from appearing at the Web page you are visiting. Click it again to permit pop-up ads.

-  AutoFill: Enables you to fill in address, name, or credit card information automatically on Web forms.

-  Blog: Lets you create a blog (Web log) entry.

-  Options: Presents a way to customize the Google toolbar.

-  Highlight: Click this button to jump from search term to search term on a Web page.