A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system, such as on the World Wide Web, inside a corporate or proprietary network, or in a personal computer. The search engine allows one to ask for content meeting specific criteria (typically those containing a given word or phrase) and retrieves a list of items that match those criteria. This list is often sorted with respect to some measure of relevance of the results. Search engines use regularly updated indexes to operate quickly and efficiently.

Without further qualification, search engine usually refers to a Web search engine, which searches for information on the public Web. Other kinds of search engine are enterprise search engines, which search on intranets, personal search engines, and mobile search engines. Different selection and relevance criteria may apply in different environments, or for different uses.

Some search engines also mine data available in newsgroups, databases, or open directories. Unlike Web directories, which are maintained by human editors, search engines operate algorithmically or are a mixture of algorthmic and human input.

Most common search engines

www.google.co.uk

www.ask.co.uk

No One Knows

Beware of the Answers

The web has very little review of its content, any one with browser access can add content and create pages to highlight their views and opinons. (for example you can easily add content to this web site and comment on this page by using the comment button at the bottom)

This means that you need to consider the quality of the information you are reading. Consider, why the author has published the information, is the site reputable, is the content or author biased.

If we consider the publication of the news. I would suggest that the Guardian web site may have a different view of an event to the Daily Mail.