Even with these fairly sophisticated search engines, many of your "hits" will turn out to be "blanks." Frequently, search engines are trained to send you to pages that offer a little bit of information only to entice you to spend money to access more comprehensive data. As a result, you should be patient when searching - looking for diamonds among the grains of sand takes time.

Even so, let's explore some of the most popular and useful search engines: Yahoo, Altavista, and Hotbot. You might recall that these three engines offer unique strengths to your searches. This exercise is designed to help you practice choosing the best engine.

• Select the search engine that is most likely to help you answer a specific question like "What is the capital of Florida?" Give it a try!

• Select the search engine that is most likely to help you find a specific phrase like "Like a rhinestone cowboy." Give it a try!

• Select the search engine that is most likely to help you locate a proper name or corporation like "Columbia." Give it a try!

As you conduct these searches, consider the types of "hits" you'd receive from other engines. Ideally, you'll come to use various types of engines for various types of searches.

Remember: search engines are not always current. Because page maintainers alter their creations on a daily (and sometimes hourly) basis, the results of a web search may not be accurate. Searching an ever-changing universe of human communication takes time!