Search engines are tools that search databases created by computer programs commonly referred to as spiders or robots. These spiders comb the World Wide Web, select every single word of every Web page they find, and put all of these words in a database that the search engine then searches for us, with the help of our search request. Each of these full-text databases accesses its database differently. Even though many search engine databases attempt to cover the entire Web, none of them actually do. The Web is getting too large for any one database to index all of it. In addition to this, the same search performed in more than one database never returns the same exact results. If you want to do a thorough search, it is wise to become familiar with a few of the different search engines. To understand search engines, it is important to become familiar with the major search features, such as Boolean logic, phrase searching, truncation, and others, before you get online. It is also necessary to read each individual search engine’s documentation before typing the search request in the query box. It is also a good idea to get in the habit of checking the documentation often, since search engines are constantly changing their search and output features.

In this chapter, we introduced the basic search strategy, a 10-step procedure that can help you formulate search requests, submit them to search engines, and modify the results retrieved. We have focused on the major search engines on the World Wide Web, but there are several hundred smaller search engines on the Web that search smaller databases. We’ll discuss these in some detail in Chapter 10, "Specialized Databases." In addition, there are other search engines that are not free to the public, but require passwords or paid subscriptions. Our intent in this chapter is to give you a foundation for searching any database, no matter if it is fee-based or not, large or small. All of the steps in the basic search strategy apply to any online database.

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