Whenever a web site is hosted, that is, put on the Internet through a server, it is assigned a unique name called a URL (uniform resource locater) and an IP (internet protocol) address. This helps people find the site if they know either the URL or the IP address. URLs are easier to remember as they are a proper name (www.writeshop.org) as against IP addresses (202.134.567.56:79685). But you don't know what's out there.

There are a handful of search engines, each with their own quirks and strengths to help locate what you want on the Internet. Each uses a different system to scan the Internet and record sites. Some don't scan the Internet at all but instead require that data be sentto them using a complex system of forms before they will register a web site.

Here's a taster: The web's most popular search engine is Yahoo! that accounts for almost half the total number of searches on the Internet. Excite is a distant second and then come a cluster of others including Hotbot, Lycos, Webcrawler, Magellan, Snap and our own homegrown Khoj.Yahoo! is simply the most popular because it is the biggest and most browsers go to it by default when asked to perform a search. I personally dislike it because searches tend to be complicated and it's difficult to find what you want. Yahoo! is also frequently slower than some of the other search engines such as Hotbot (my favorite) or even Excite. And it throws up a lot of garbage. Yahoo! requires some time and patience before the search yields what you want. Otherwise you will end up with hundreds of thousands of pages that do not have the information you are looking for.

If you look for `environment' on Yahoo!, it will show you a list of sites thathave nothing to do with environment. You will need to specify the type of environment, and to do this you'll have to follow a complicated system of links. Then you start to get warmer until you actually find what you want. Ultimately a page with relevant sites and pages opens up. But to get to this information you have already performed Internet gymnastics. Yahoo! does this because it scans different parts of a web page for information before listing it in a section. A simpler option is to use another search engine.The Yahoo! interface is simple enough and lets you choose the broad subject area. However, beyond that it asks too many questions before it gets on with the job. Want to focus your search? Ask for `Advanced options' and then you can ask the search engine to look for all the words, the phrase or a part of the phrase. But the point is that in order to do this you need to go to another page--it is not upfront.

Try Hotbot at www.hotbot.com. Though not large, Hotbot uses a simpler way of gatheringinformation about web sites. People can select the kind of search--tell Hotbot to search for the entire phrase or a particular word. It can even be case-sensitive. It's all up there when you open the first search screen. True it clutters the interface somewhat but reduces the time taken to actually begin the search. Hotbot returns results fast and usually does a better job of providing you with what you want. It also has a site rating in percentages that says how closely the site matches what you were searching for--the higher the percentage, the closer the match.

There is also an abstract against each site that indicates what the organisation does. Unfortunately, this has something to do with the way Hotbot accepts URLs for listing--it is prone to dead or outdated links.There is no real way around except to visit the links you think might match your requirement.

Excite is another popular search engine that is again faster than Yahoo! and returns good results. Excite also very considerately gives you asite match index--higher the number, closer the match. And it's interface is simple and easy to use. Excite differs from many other search engines in the way that it lists new web sites. Once every two weeks, Excite searches the Internet using a `Spider' that looks for new material on the Web. It is slow and can take time but takes the onus of listing new sites away from the web site developer. It also uses Excite's own process to list sites that are more consistent than most other search engines.

Our home grown search engine Khoj is a Yahoo! wannabe and looks the part. Its creators said they wanted to create an Indian Yahoo! and they seem to have succeeded. But Khoj is slow and is good only if you are looking for India-related material. Nothing else registers. The up-side is that registering with Khoj is simple and fast unlike with Yahoo! that has a series of pages to be filled up before you are in.

Each search engine vies with the others to become the default opening page of a browser. To this end, theyhave introduced things like My Yahoo! or My Excite that can be customised. You can now create an opening page that will tell you the latest news--political, business and sports--weather, stock quotations, horoscopes and other sundry stuff, though all this originates in the west and is of little use in India. They do give you a kick though. Most of them look the same and have come to mimmick the opening pages of Microsoft and Netscape, the two browser giants.

The nice thing about customising a search engine's page is that you get a free e-mail address and if you do it right, your browser will automatically check mail for you. A relief if you are allergic to remembering passwords and login names.

Used intelligently, search engines can be a boon. Used carelessly, they are a dead loss and good luck to you if you are after some hard-to-get information. It can still take a great patience before you manage to unearth the mysteries of the Internet using a web browser.