The World Wide Web began life as a research tool, and for many people it's the best research system ever created.
The great power of the Web is that any person or any organization can publish anything they want. The great problem of the Web is finding the information you want.
I use a variety of search engines; the engine I pick depends on what kind of information I'm searching for. But I've also found that sometimes it makes sense to skip search engines entirely and try other services tailored to a particular application.
Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) works best if I'm searching for a company by name or category. Yahoo wins because its company index categorizes Web sites, rather than simply noting which words appear on each page. (For example, a search for ''General Motors'' turns up sites divided into categories such as ''Companies: Automotive: Parts: Makes and Models, and Companies: Automotive: Manufacturers.)
If I can't find something with Yahoo, the next stop is HotBot (www.hotbot.com). The reason: It's very easy to construct a powerful search query without using an arcane search technique. With HotBot, you type a simple search phrase like ''Simson Garfinkel's Home Page.''
Then you specify whether you want Web pages that contain all the words in your search phrase, any of the words, the exact phrase you typed, or just pages with a matching title. HotBot lets you further restrict your search by time - you can just get pages that have changed within the past two weeks, for example. And you can limit your search to particular Internet domains.
If you click the HotBot button labeled ''More Search Options,'' you can target the search even more precisely by specifying additional words that must (or must not) appear on the pages. There's also more flexibility to specify the range of dates, location on the Internet, and even how far down into each Web site you want to search.
Of the other search engines, Excite (www.excite.com), Lycos (www.lycos.com), and InfoSeek (www.infoseek.com) also have advanced search pages. They are fairly easy to use, but none has HotBot's flexibility. To do an advanced search with AltaVista, you'll need to learn the engine's somewhat obscure search language.
So which search engine is best?
Although there are a lot of studies on this topic, I suggest you make up a search phrase and try them all out yourself. Different people search for things in different ways; even though one search engine might score highest on some objective test, you might find that engine is not best suited to your needs. I did this test myself, searching for ''Simson Garfinkel's Home Page.'' HotBot and Lycos did the best, both listing my home page first. AltaVista returned my home page as the its second highest hit. Neither InfoSeek nor Excite listed my home page.
Web pages aren't the only things I spend my time searching for. For that reason, there are a lot of other search services that I keep in my list of Internet bookmarks.
If I'm looking for the proper title, the publication date, or the author of a book, I'll click over to Amazon.com (www.amazon.com). I use Amazon even if I don't plan to buy the book - Amazon's search system is the best way I have found to determine which books remain in print. If the book isn't on Amazon, I'll check the Library of Congress's Web site (www.loc.gov), which is a bit more complicated, slower, and available only from 4:35 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Friday (Eastern time), with shorter hours on the weekends.
If I'm looking for a person's telephone number or address, I usually put down my mouse, pick up the telephone, and dial directory assistance. That's because I've tried all of the Internet white pages and have been uniformly disappointed: They all list information that's either wrong or out-of-date.
I had my Cambridge telephone installed in March. It was available the next day from Bell Atlantic by calling directory assistance. But you still can't find my proper phone number and address on line.
Do a search for Simson Garfinkel using Four11 (www.four11.com) and you'll get an address where I haven't lived since 1995. Bigfoot (www.bigfoot.com) and InfoSpace (www.infospace.com) list my Seattle phone number, which was disconnected last June. Switchboard (www.switchboard.com) listed a phone that was disconnected in December. What's really embarrassing here is that even Bell Atlantic's BigYellow search engine returns the wrong information for me, because Bell Atlantic sublicenses Four11's database, rather than using its own.
If you are committed to using one of the on-line white pages, here's a tip: Bigfoot is the only service that clearly indicates when each record was updated. If you must use Four11, use it through Yahoo - it's more nicely formatted.
If I want to find where someplace is, I'll click to Maps On Us (www.mapsonus.com), which seems to have accurate and up-to-date maps for most areas that I've looked at. Maps On Us lets you record landmarks, plan routes, and even share maps with other people on the system. The service was developed by Lucent Technologies and was recently sold to Switchboard. I hope that Switchboard doesn't let the quality drop.
If I'm looking for a definition to a computer term, I'll click into Mecklermedia's PC Webopaedia (www.webopaedia.com). The service gives a brief definition for each word, cross-references to other words, and even links to Web sites on the topic. Webopaedia's home page lists the most popular terms that have been searched for as well as recent additions, which makes it easy to masquerade as one of the computer cognoscenti.
There are lots of other search tools. If I missed your favorite, drop me a line at plugged-in@simson.net. I'll print the best ones in September when school starts.
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