Search the Internet

What is Internet?

Internet is a worldwide web of information, where anyone can freely produce material. Information or data is transmitted through the web in electric form. All the data consists of two numbers: 0 and 1. The language of computers can change those numbers to text, pictures, music and so on.

There is no beginning or end on the Internet. New computers are being connected and old ones disconnected all the time. No one really knows how many sites there are on the Internet but probably billions. The number varies according to different ways to count. It has been estimated that many of the sites are commercial and written in English.

Different ways to search the Internet

The searching of information on the Internet isn’t difficult, because there are several ways to search.

Search engines

Google must be one of the most used search engines on the Net at the moment, because it gives the most relevant results. You can use the Advanced Search of Google for more demanding Internet searches too. There are many other search engines on the Internet as well for example AltaVista.

Subject directories

Subject directories try to categorise the web by different topics. Bookster thinks that the best subject directory or link library in Finland is Makupalat (Tasty Bits) made by Hämeenlinna City Library. There are also links to sites in English, but the description of the sites is in Finnish only. There are many subject directories on the Internet (e.g. Yahoo or Open Directory). There is a directory in Google as well.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia on the Internet. Everyone is free to write and edit articles on it. So many people are using and improving it even errors are corrected fast. Remember though, that Wikipedia is not to be trusted completely. Someone might have corrected the right piece of information to a wrong one.

Information search on the Internet can be done effortlessly but you can’t be sure of the reliability of the information.