From the course: Computer Literacy for Mac (2018)
Understanding search engines
- [Instructor] A significant part of being connected to the internet is having access to the seemingly unlimited amounts of information out there. As you probably know, the best way to find information you're looking for is to perform a search through a search engine. A search engine is an online resource that systematically catalogs the contents of the web so that when you perform a search, it can bring up web pages matching the words or terms you're looking for. Search engines acquire their data by using programs, sometimes called spiders, which scour the web, following link after link and creating a database of not just the words on a web page, but also the order of the words and their relationship or proximity to other items like pictures or videos, which most search engines also catalog. By far the most popular search engine is Google, but there are other popular search engines out there like Microsoft's Bing search engine, Yahoo!, and DuckDuckGo. Searching is such an integral part of being on the web that all current web browsers have web searching built-in. Instead of typing the address of a website into a search bar, just type the word or phrase you're looking for to automatically search with your browser's default search engine. Often you'll even get a list of suggested search terms as you're typing, which you can select to immediately search. This saves you the time of having to first browse to Google.com or another search engine's website. In most cases, you can also change your web browser's default search engine. For example, in Safari you open Preferences. And then under the Search tab, you can select from Google, Yahoo!, Bing, or DuckDuckGo. Next we'll take a look at some basic search techniques.
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