h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well sort of...the answer is: it depends on a) how specific your query is and b) how good your search engine is.
One of the most productive things I've learnt to do is to type in the words 'search engines' into the best search engine I have available.
This provides a lot of references but generally if you haven't found what you want after two or three pages you probably won't. There is usually at least one or two sites dedicated to reviewing search engines - check the recommnedations. There are references to most things on the net but not every search engine searches in very much detail.
I can recommend [URL removed by moderator]as the best general search around at the moment. If you are still coming up with too many replies make your query more specific. eg If you want info on ginger cats called fluffy simply typing in cats will provide thousands of pages, ginger cats less and ginger cats called fluffy even fewer. Most searches have an advanced option which give options to narrow or widen the search. Searching for info is the whole key to this thing. Right ho then...Hi there! I'm androyd one of the Assistant Community Editors who have volunteered to help new members. Welcome to the largest collaborative writing project er...anywhere. If you want to know more about what this thing is then please come to my welcome page where there is a lot more information and links around this site. Just click here:http://www.h2g2.com/A503849

If not then suit yourself. By all means get in touch if you have any queries,comments or just to say hi!!. Just reply to this message or click on my name and leave a message on my page.
Welcome once again.
Androyd

Thanks for the welcome. My time is a little limited but I hope in time to make a positive contribution to this community.

The information on search engines was really useful. I had found the AOL search engine absolutely rubbish. Even using it to find a known website as a test would often give you 99% compatable links to say "tomato growing in Iowa" or some other irrelevant rubbish.

Google is far far better. Yesterday I needed to find a hotel in Canada where my mother is staying (I live in UK). I sort of knew the name and more or less where it was. I tried a query on Google, based on my dodgy information. Bang the right link came up as the number choice!

Google is definitely the best for general queries but I have also downloaded Bullseye which was recommended by ZDnet - this is good for more estoric/academic stuff as it visits databases that many engines leave alone - Intelliseek is the site to go to ( look it up on Google!!)

Indeed, Google is fine, Dogpile and Northern Light are pretty good as well.