The Importance of Finding Things

While it's a lot of fun to just surf the Web randomly, the power and value of what you have in WebTV comes from being able to find exactly what you're looking for. To do this, you'll need to learn how to use a couple of kinds of tools.

Basic Tools

The two most common kinds of "finders" are web directories and search engines.

Web Directories

Web directories are collections of websites sorted in hierarchical categories. For instance, a directory might have a top-level category of Government, further broken down into United States, then California, Cities, and then particular cities. This top-down organization can lead you to what you're looking for very quickly if you have a topic and direction, but you want to see a wide variety of related things at the same time. And frequently directories are the best way to begin finding something.

Search Engines

Search engines are better for finding a needle in a haystack, or a very limited quantity of relevant websites. Unlike web directories, which can guide you by their structure to your goal, if you're not specific enough when using a search engine, you'll likely be frustrated reaching your goal. Try to choose a word or phrase in your search terms that is specific enough to nail down what you're trying to find, ambiguity will give you too many unrelated sites to sift through.

What's Out There

Here's a link to a page full of search resources. First, read about how to choose a search engine or web directory most appropriate to the search you want to conduct; near the top of that page, you'll find several links to pages telling you what resources are best for your particular needs. Below the guides, you'll find a lot of sites to try.

The best web directory in my opinion is Yahoo!; the best general search engine is probably HotBot. The best metasearch engines (which use several other search engines together and consolidate those multiple findings) are Inference Find! and Dog Pile; and the best "needle-in-a-haystack" search engines are Alta Vista and Open Text.

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