To Google or not to Google might well be your dilemma!

I can well remember a time when Google did not exist, but I'll bet there are not many today who do not give it a second thought. We need to find some information about something so we just go to Google, type in some keywords and, Hey! Pronto! Something like ten million results pop up. This gives us breadth not depth people! You would not even be able to count to ten million in your lifetime if you tried I do not suggest doing it as I believe there are more worthy goals in life, as I believe there are more worthy search engines out in the e-world, but read on and make your judgment.

We use Google as a verb, for example, "to Google" or "Googling/Googled", we even say "I Googled him/it" when referring to a search done on a particular person or subject. However, Google is by far neither the only search engine nor the be-all and end-all of search engines. The information presented here can easily be verified and "discovered" by anyone, and is mostly directed to the layman.

In simple terms, a search engine is a tool which allows its users to search through its databases of information; for many of the old-timers (I include myself in this group of people who did not grow up with the Internet) think about the library catalog that summarizes all the information about what is contained in the library. By and large most search engines will have quite similar databases. The databases are catalogs organized according to each search engine's software design, criteria and business models, but essentially they are similar. They are summarized versions of what is visible (accessible) to all search engines on the Internet.

Search engines use software to trawl through the "visible" pages on the Internet; by visible we mean pages that can be openly and freely accessed on the Internet, not pages on Intranets and private networks. Once the trawling is done, usually at regular intervals, the results are stored in the search engine's databases and are made available to the users of the search engine to query. Hence, when queried, search engines search the results they have of their meticulous searches (trawling) of the Internet; they not search all the pages on the Internet; much like you look through the library catalog and do not go browsing all the selves. This model is what makes it possible to perform a search and get ridiculous results like millions of available pages almost instantaneously.

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