Why is it important to learn how to search the Web?

How hard can it be to find the information I need off the World Wide Web (or the Web)? All I have to do is enter in my search term, right? Well, yes and no…. but contrary to popular belief entering a search term in the first open search box you see will not automatically bring up the exact information you need. It’s a little more complicated than that.

One of the biggest problems people encounter when they first begin using the Web is trying to find the information they need. It usually isn’t a matter of finding too little information on a topic, but rather of finding too much… too many web sites on a topic.

Size of the web graphic

Remember, the Web is extremely large. According to Steve Lawrence and C. Lee Giles, from the NEC Research Institute, as of February 1999 the publicly indexed Web contained an estimated 800 million pages (from "Accessibility of information on the web", Nature, Vol. 400, pp. 107-109, 1999).

This means that at any given time when you perform a web search for that one item you need, you are typically searching from an extremely large pool of web sites depending on where you search. I’m sure most of you have already experienced what it’s like to retrieve a million items from one online search. AND, because anyone is able to publish on the Web the quality of these search results varies tremendously. Most times you must weed out many poor quality or unsuitable web sites before finding a worthwhile source that is appropriate to your need at the time.

However, searching the Web need not be overly difficult especially if you understand some of the basics including How do I search and basic information on Search Engines, Subject Directories and Metasearch Engines.