Search Engines

Search engines are databases of web pages that either compile their own searchable databases (individual) or search the databases of other individual engines at the same time (meta). It was interesting to learn about the "spiders" that crawl around through the web to index the words in the sites. I always wondered how the search engines knew ALL the web sites on the Internet. Come to find out, that's not actually true. One is actually searching a portion of the Web, the sites that have been indexed previously by that "spider." Any new information added to a web page is inaccessable (to the search engine) until the page has been "spidered" and indexed. When the searcher types the keywords into the search box, the engine scans the index for words and phrases that match the keywords. I did not know that different search engines could provide different results. It is best to use search engines when a variety or wide range of responses is desired.