The Internet is a very large and rather complex place. You might imagine that finding information on the Internet would be very difficult. This would probably be the case if it weren't for the development of Search Engines. Search engines are programs that allow you to type in a word or phrase and search the Internet for pages containing information on the topic you typed in. The search engine then returns the pages it found, along with a brief description of the information on that page. This is a very useful and easy to use tool.
First, you will learn how to use a search engine and then you will get to try it out for yourself
For the purpose of teaching you, we will use a search engine called Altavista. When you first enter the search engine, you will see a page that looks like this:
On any search engine, there is always a long, blank box, called a Text Box, with a Search button after it. This box usually is located at the top of the screen, but it may be further down the page. Use your mouse to click inside of the box. A cursor should appear. Use your keyboard to type in the topic you want to search for. It may be a question like "What did Egyptian priests do?", or a word such as "Greece", or a phrase, such as "ancient cultures". The more specific you make you request, the easier it will be to find the information you are looking for. For example, if you typed in just "Greece", you would find information on ancient Greece, modern Greece, Greek foods, etc, whereas if you typed in "Women in Ancient Greece", you would find information of the roles women played in ancient Greece. We'll try a search for "Daily Life in Ancient Egypt".
First you type in your topic:
Once you've finished typing hit the Enter key on your keyboard or use you mouse to click on the Search button located next to the box.
The search engine will then match the words you gave it to all of the pages it knows about. Once it has done that, it will return the pages it found, along with a brief description of each page. Be patient, this may take a few minutes. The list will look something like this:
The first ten or twenty results will be displayed on the page. They will be numbered, with a brief description of the page, the page's URL, and it's size. On some search engines, only the titles of each page will be displayed. You can click on the Summary link to get the descriptions of the pages. Read over the list of pages the search engine found. If one sounds interesting, click on the blue title link with your mouse to go to that page.
If you decide that the page is not what you wanted, click the back button of your browser to go back to the search engine. If none of the first ten pages suit your purposes, you can use the Next link located after the last page description to view the next ten search results.
This will display results 11-20 for the Daily Life in Ancient Egypt search you made. Generally, the results that match your topic the closest will be found in the first three pages of search results. If you can't find the right page, try modifying your search (i.e. use "What did people eat in Ancient Egypt") or try a different search engine. Each search engine accesses it's own database of Internet sites, and different search engines will give you different results.
You can try using a search engine now by clicking here, or learn about some other options provided by search engines by clicking here.
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