For
uninitiated, searching for web pages can seem a slow, obscure process. Unless you have a high-speed Internet connection, web pages may seem to take days to load. And searching itself – you have to admit it looks weird typing in bunches of plus signs, asterisks, parenthesis, and other funny symbols and operators to find what you want.To help you in this process and show that you are not, I’ve compiled a top five list of things you must realize when searching web for information. No pencils will fly, no drums will roll, but you just might learn something.
5. Search Engines Have to Make Money
Before you grumble over growing number of advertisements and sponsored links that appear in search engine results page, remember that most search engines are free. You’re not paying anything for a very costly service. Thus, these sites have to earn income somehow to stay afloat (computing power and bandwidth isn’t cheap!) So, to put it bluntly… live with it.
(Yes, I know some types of advertising are much more obtrusive than others. Popup ads, dancing animations, and other larger advertisements may make it harder to use some search engines that support these types of ads. If you don’t like it, vote with your mouse clicks and move to another search engine).
4. Sites Go Down
Worse yet, you’ve entered in your perfect search query, looked at results page, and first site you see no longer exists!
The Internet changes all time. Unfortunately, search engines and directories are not able to constantly query every site on Internet to see if they are still online. Occasionally (in other words, probably frequently) you will find links to web sites that no longer exist. It is just a part of life. Especially with dot-com bust, many web site owners can no longer afford to host free resources. If they could not convert their traffic to paying customers, they just took their sites down.
So when you find a link that is dead, don’t pump your fist in anger … just go back to results page and move along. Or, better yet, if you’re using a search engine that caches pages, such as Google, just look at cached version of now defunct pages and find information contained therein. It’s like stepping through a time machine!
3. Your Web Browser Will Crash
On a related note, not only do web sites go down – but so may your web browser. Sometimes it will be due to visiting a multimedia-intensive web site. Sometimes it will seem to happen for no reason. But it will happen, and when it does, don’t go blaming yourself saying that you did something wrong.
Web browsers, like just about any other type of computer software program available on market, are not infallible. They can and usually do contain bugs. These may predictably rear their ugly heads when visiting sites containing a lot of multimedia and advanced interactive elements, or they may appear completely at random.
