BUT, not all search engines are alike. Search engines, for the most part, have chosen to emphasize different capabilities and search methods. I begin with different ones, depending on the information I have at hand and the information I am attempting to locate. Searching for information on the World Wide Web involves both understanding the tools one has available and when (and how) to best utilize each tool. Here are some of the most well known general search engines:
Yahoo! (Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Object-oriented search engine), for example, is a good place to start for what I call a "subject search". That is, you know what general category you are looking in but don't know the names of particular sites. Yahoo! is generally acknowledged to be the leader in the field of website categories (i.e. directories).
HotBot (among others) allows you to restrict your search to "the exact phrase" or "the person". This can be quite useful when your topic is a phrase rather than a single word (such as "cellular phone"). This is also the only search engine I regularly use which allows you to search "by the person". As with all search engines, it is necessary to type the person's first name first, followed by the last name.
Alta Vista , in addition to allowing exact phrases, is a good choice for keywords, even if more than one word.
Excite even offers an easy-to-use free personal home page for its users (see Make Excite My Start Page).
There are also search engines which specialize in looking up individual people's email addresses and voice phone numbers, such as WhoWhere. Yahoo (and others) also have a link to excellent personal email lookup search engines. Switchboard (and others) allows one to search for voice telephone listings, businesses & residential, but don't expect any Web search engine to have "unlisted" phone numbers. AltaVista, in particular, has a good picture search engine, where you can see thumbnail-size images of your picture before you decide to click on it to retrieve it.
There are, of course, many more search engines than these. But mastering these will give one a solid start. If you do not find a web site using these search engines, remember that that does NOT necessarily mean that it is not out there. It means that on that particular day you just did not find it. But you have a much better chance of finding what you want once you have learned what each of the above search engines can do for you!
For more information see: