There are various search engines located on the Internet, which allow for numerous amounts of information to be recovered. The search engines I focused on are: Findwhat, Google, Webcrawler, Excite, Lycos, and Northern Light. While using these search engines my searches focused on topics of Ghana, teach abroad, and computer lesson plans. On Findwhat.com results are ranked on an open bidding system. Higher paid advertisements are closer to the top of the search engines. Findwhat.com provides built in filters, which can be activated if necessary. There is a limited amount of information on requested search topics. The number of web sites available for the information I requested are as follows: Ghana- 25, teach abroad- 2, and computer lesson plans- 75. Google.com uses text-matching techniques to find pages, Google only returns pages that include exactly the words you enter in the search box. Google allows the user to refine their search and its searches covers many URLs. Google also provides restricted searches to the US government, Linux, Apple, BSD and universities. Googles help menu covers an array of topics, which proves very useful. The searches for the following topics were as follows: Ghana- over 100, Teach Abroad- over 100, and computer lesson plans- over 100 web sites. Excite.com is a visually overwhelming web site. This search engine provides a vast amount of information but I would not recommended its use for special education students, for they may get distracted easily. Excite offers quick find options to view specific topics in the areas of autos, careers, computers, entertainment, music, news, etc. Excite allows you to view requested information with full descriptions, titles only, or just URLs. The user also has the option of narrowing down their search with Excites Zoom-In feature. One impressive feature excite has is its global access to countries like Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan and UK. This option...
