Searching for Computer Industry Sites on the Internet (141671)

SUMMARY

There are several search services on the Internet that allow you to enter keywords, such as a company or product name, and receive a list of sites that contain information on those keywords. This article provides the addresses of two of the most popular sites.

To search for a company site, enter the complete name of the company on the query line; if you fail to use the complete company name, you may receive unexpected results. For example, if you query on the word "apple," the query returns hits not only on Apple Computer, but also any hits on sites concerned with growing, selling, or cooking with apples.

MORE INFORMATION

Lycos can be accessed at http://www.lycos.com/reference/faq.html. Lycos considers the Internet a massive catalog of information, data, and documents. They provide a catalog for this wealth of information and a means to search the catalog. The Lycos FAQ page (at the http address above) provides a complete introduction to the services and history of Lycos in the form of an FAQ.

The Lycos Home Page provides a query line, several Search options, and several Display options, all of which you can choose from a list box. To query the Lycos catalog, enter your query terms or keywords on the query line, and then click Search. The /reference/search-help.html page provides instructions on how to use the search features.

When your search is complete, Lycos displays the results of the search by number of URLs containing your search terms, the number of documents containing your search terms, and a relevancy ranking with the most relevant listings at the top of the list.

There are also News, Hot Lists, Point Reviews, and Help jumps, each containing current information on the subject category. Lycos claims to index over 90% of the World Wide Web, and it includes FTP and Gopher sites.

YAHOO, or Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle, is one of the most popular Web search sites and can be accessed at http://www.yahoo.com.

On the YAHOO Home Page you find a hierarchical listing of categories by subject, a query line, and a Search button. To query on all listings, enter your search terms on the query line and click the search button. To query in one subject category only, click the category title and jump to the category page; then, use the query line on that page. Near the Search button is the Options jump-text. If you jump to this page, you can compose Boolean searches using AND and OR operators.

When your search is complete, YAHOO displays the results of the search, organized by category. Appended at the bottom of each search is an Other Search Engines list that includes Lycos, Web Crawler, Inforseek, and DejaNews. Clicking on one of these names takes you to that search service; these services are smaller, or index a limited range of topics.