There are billions of documents about every topic you can think of, and then more, which can be found on the Internet via the World Wide Web. Every medium in digital form can be stored on the Internet: text files, texts that have been edited by a word processor, sound, photographs, cartoons, video images.
The information that one person or organization puts on the Web at a particular place is called a website. The starting point of an area on the Web where the person or the organization has placed the information is called the homepage.
Each of these webpages has a unique address, a kind of telephone number called the Uniform Resource Locator, or URL. Web pages contain information in the form of text and often images, sound and video.
In an attempt to find what they wanted easily, people invented search engines to help them find the kind of information they wanted.
Search engines use software robots to survey the Web and build their databases. Web documents are retrieved and indexed. When you enter a question at a search engine website, your question is checked against the search engine's keyword indices. The best matches are then returned to you as hits.
Remember all of the information in a Web directory or on a Web Page has been put there by a person, and we should always consider the expertise and the biais of that person before we use or believe the information they show us.
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This file prepared and presented as an aid to help students understand the web. Send questions or comments to Royce Shook