Chapter 1. SEARCH ENGINES

For an Internet researcher the first great tool is the general, Internet-wide search engine. The largest ones encompass huge amounts of data (Google at last count indexed over four billion pages, but even that isn't the entire Web or even, it is speculated, the majority of the Web). They're also your ticket to finding more general search engines and useful information collections.

So as an Internet researcher the first element you must know is the general search engine. There are two that I consider major and a bunch of minor ones. They can be divided into two broad categories: full-text search engines and searchable subject indexes.