How to Search on the Internet #4: Search by Word or Phrase

When all of the other approaches fail, or if you think they are likely to fail to find what you are looking for, try a search oriented site. These are based on the following idea: The owners of the sites write programs that read as many web pages as possible. Starting at known and submitted home pages, they "crawl" through all of the links they can find, and "read" the text on all of the pages. Then they index all of the words on the pages. (There is generally no thinking about the meaning of the words involved in this process.) You can then search for words, phrases, or combinations of words and phrases. The format and possible complexity of your query varies with the site. The results can be quite surprising, but basically every searched document that has the words you are looking for is presented to you in a list. See the examples for more details.


1. Guess URL
2. By List
3. By Category
4. Word Search: Links . Examples . Quiz