One day last summer, Google’s search engine trundled quietly past a milestone. It added the one trillionth address to the list of Web pages it knows about. But as impossibly big as that number may seem, it represents only a fraction of the entire Web.

Beyond those trillion pages lies an even vaster Web of hidden data: financial information, shopping catalogs, flight schedules, medical research and all kinds of other material stored in databases that remain largely invisible to search engines.

Visual searches just keep getting better and better. Viewzi is a metasearch engine that lets you view relational data in a fun and easy-to-use visual paradigm. Currently, there are fourteen ways to view a search term, including mp3, video, 3d photo, basic photo, web screenshots, and more.

Web Search is an online search tool Bovee & Thill developed that enables business communication instructors to have 334 search engines at their fingertips for quick, comprehensive searching online.

"A vast number of great search engines are now available, including many specialized ones, but it often takes considerable time and effort to find the best ones that suit your needs,” says Bovee, “but our new search tool gives you instant access within seconds to hundreds of search engines to do keyword searching on literally any topic you wish."

The tool uses a simple, attractive, intuitive interface, engineered to help business communication instructors find precisely what they want, whether it’s PowerPoints files, Adobe Acrobat PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, or Excel files.

Users can also search for academic content or instructional assistance, or search online libraries, news sites, newspapers and magazines, newsletters, blogsites, the blogosphere, forums and groups, wikis, reference, government, information about people, social bookmarking sites, press releases, company information, photographs, videos, videoblogs, podcasts, or RSS newsfeeds.

The tool also includes major search, metasearch, visible search, invisible web search, and social bookmarking search engines.

"The tool we’ve developed is an interface to the whole world of web information, using the best search technologies, which enable the user to access information more in-depth, easier, and more rapidly than ever before," says Thill.

Google has announced the launch of SearchWiki, a major addition to its user interface that allows users to edit search results. When using SearchWiki, you can re-order, remove, or add web pages to the search results for any query. You can also add notes to specific listings. You have to be logged in to a Google account so that the changes you make will be saved and shown the next time you run the same search.

“This is a way for search to adapt to a more interactive experience,” says Google Product Manager Cedric Dupont. “We ran a bunch of experiments, and the response was overwhelmingly positive from our users. They asked for this feature.”

Twing.com is a new search engine specifically for blogs and forums.

This is a great guide for selecting the best search tools.

A study of the use of areas of the brain during different activities found that it is markedly more active when carrying out an Internet search than when reading a book.

The stimulation was concentrated in the frontal, temporal, and cingulate areas, which control visual imagery, decision-making, and memory.

The areas associated with abstract thinking and empathy showed virtually no increase in stimulation.

The study's authors say it shows how our brains could evolve over the long term with the increased use of technology.

But while the internet brings benefits for the brain, they warned against its overuse, which could come at the expense of other brain functions linked to human interaction.

Do unflattering photos or embarrassing blog postings pop up when someone Googles your name? Or are you concerned about your privacy in this new digital age? With Google's excellent indexing of the Internet, the reality is that friends, family members and employers can find out more information about you than you potentially want them to, just by "Googling" your full name. Here are a few ways of getting out of this situation.

Instead of just typing in a phrase and wading through page after page of results, there are a number of ways to make your searches more efficient.

Some of these are obvious ones, that you probably know about. But others are lesser-known, and others are known but not often used. Use this guide to learn more about, or be reminded of, some of the best ways to get exactly what you're looking for, and quickly.

Opportunities for social networking abound on the Internet, but not when it comes to one standard job: using a browser and search engine to comb the web for information. That task is still typically done solo, because browser displays and search procedures have traditionally been designed for a single user.

Meredith Ringel Morris (pictured here) of Microsoft Research has created a tool that lets people at different computers work together on an online search—dividing responsibilities and pooling results.