Searching on the Web

As noted above, finding major companies on the Web is usually easy—just enter the company's name in the Address bar and then press Enter.

Finding specific things on the Web is not so easy. This is where search services (also called search engines) come in. A search service is a Web site devoted to cataloging the entire Web and providing a way for you to search this catalog. You can use a search service to find Web pages of interest to you, either by searching for keywords or by using a so-called directory style search service to find Web pages by browsing a category list.

You can search in three different ways with Internet Explorer: using the Address bar, the Search toolbar button, or a search-engine Web page; the following discussion covers all three techniques.

Tip

If you find a Web page that's particularly useful, you can choose Tools→Show Related Links to open a list of pages that, according to a software robot, contain information that's similar to what's on the currently open Web page.

A Quick Guide to Search Services

There's no tidy card catalog of every Web page. Because Web pages appear and disappear hourly by the hundreds of thousands, such an exercise would be futile.

Fortunately, two types of search services await to help you find the pages you want—subject directories and search engines. A subject directory is like the subject catalog in a library: It groups Web sites by topic (such as sports, government, or astronomy). Unlike a library's subject catalog, though, subject directories contain only a tiny portion of the total number of documents on the Web; the sites are added to their listings manually, by human editors. Some of the best directory services are http://Yahoo.com and http://LookSmart.com. (The Search functions of MSN Search, Excite, and many other partners rely on the LookSmart directory.)

GEM IN THE ROUGH : The Complete Guide to Web-Page Scrolling

If a Web page doesn't fit entirely in your browser window, you can, of course, use the vertical scroll bar to move up and down the page. But to save mousing, press the Space bar each time you want to see more. Press Shift+Space to scroll up. (The Space bar has its traditional, space-making function only when your insertion point is blinking in a text box or the Address bar.)

You can also press your up- and down-arrow keys to scroll. Page Up and Page Down scroll in full-screen increments; and Home and End take you to the top or bottom of the current Web page.

Finally, if your mouse has a roller wheel, you can turn it with your finger to scroll the page, or click the wheel and move the mouse up or down to activate the AutoScroll feature. If you have a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer mouse, you can also use the two special buttons located by your thumb (if you're right-handed) as Back and Forward buttons.

Search engines, on the other hand, use automated software to detect and index Web sites. These programs, called robots or spiders, roam the Web hunting for new pages. When the robot finds a new page, it reports the address, retrieves all or part of the page's text, and adds the information to a database. Even the best search engines cover only 10 or 20 percent of the Web (though that includes about 90 percent of the useful pages), so finding what you're looking for can be tricky. (http://Google.com is one of the best search engines; it's uncannily accurate in finding the information you want.)

Tip

You don't have to go to a search-engine Web page to begin your search; instead, you can simply type a word or phrase (such as electric drapes, for example) into the Address bar and then press Enter. (If Internet Explorer doesn't interpret your phrase as a search request, add the word find in front of it.)

Internet Explorer assumes that you mean, "Find electric drapes." The search results appear in the Search bar on the left; click a hyperlink to go to that Web page.

To control which search engines Internet Explorer uses when you perform this kind of search, see Section 3.6.3.2.

Using the Search Bar

The Search bar (View→Explorer Bar→Search, or click the Search toolbar button) lets you search using multiple search engines at once. This left-side window panel works, in Internet Explorer, exactly as it does in desktop windows; see Section 3.6.3.1 for a tutorial.

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