This 90-slide, nicely illustrated presentation discusses the background of search, browers, search engines, directories, blogs, Web 2.0, and Internet politics.

Search engines are very different from subject directories. While humans organize and catalog subject directories, search engines rely on computer programs called spiders or robots to crawl the Web and log the words on each page. With a search engine, keywords related to a topic are typed into a search "box."

The search engine scans its database and returns a file with links to websites containing the word or words specified. Because these databases are very large, search engines often return thousands of results. Without search strategies or techniques, finding what you need can be like finding a needle in a haystack.