If you are exploring the Web for information on a particular topic, four types of website can help you find what you are looking for:
¨ Directory Sites
These are websites that catalogue information on the Web according to subject matter.
www.yahoo.co.uk www.ukplus.co.uk
¨ Search Engines
These are websites that create an index of key words and phrases found in web pages.
http://uk.altavista.com www.excite.com www.go.com www.google.co.uk
¨ Meta Search Engines
These are websites that submit key words to several search engines, effectively allowing you to use multiple search engines at once.
www.metacrawler.com www.dogpile.com
¨ Natural Language Search Engines
These are websites that accept queries in plain English.
Another way of finding information is by connecting to a Portal site.
Portal sites act as gateways to the Web, providing useful links to other sites as well as content of their own.
A portal site is intended to be used as your default page - the one that loads when you start the web browser.
www.bbc.co.uk http://portal.f9.net.uk