Search the Web
See also I found it on the web, our guide to using web pages properly in college research.
About the Searches
Internet search engines
The major search engines may all seem the same, but different search engines capture different portions of the web, and no search engine captures the entire content of the web. They all have different methods for sorting the results, too.
If you are not finding good results using one search engine, try the others. And don't forget that each search engine offers an "advanced" page where you can make a more exact search.
Metasearch engines
Metasearch engines search more than one site at the same time and return results from multiple search engines on one screen. Dogpile has a feature that allows you to see hits that are only coming from one search engine (e.g., pages that only Google registers as a hit) and Vivisimo has a very useful "clustered" search that helps you get more relevant results by differentiating between, say, Apple Computer and apple trees.
Other WWW searches
Wikipedia is the site that librarians love to hate (or hate to love; depends on who you ask). Since anyone can edit this free online encyclopedia, there is no one to guarantee its accuracy. General encyclopedias like Wikipedia or even Britannica aren't generally considered very good academic sources, anyway.
Wikipedia can be helpful if you are researching a subject that is new or changing rapidly or related to the Internet itself, but your best bet when using Wikipedia is to use it as background information or to lead you to more scholarly published sources.
The Librarians' Internet Index is a directory of authoritative web sites in all subjects.