Reasons People Search on the Internet

People are always searching for information on the Web. Here are just a few of the millions of sites that are just a click or two away. Perhaps one or two may have been useful to you.
Click on the thumbnails to see full-sized images. Links to the Web sites are in the rightmost column. Clicking on any of these links will open the Web site in a separate browser window, so you can switch back-and-forth between this lesson and the Web site.

In the search marketing field, the pages the engines return to fulfill a query are referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs). Each engine returns results in a slightly different format and will include vertical search results (specific content targeted to a query based on certain triggers in the query, which we will illustrate shortly). Academics can research current articles in their field.

Discover traffic refers to website or app traffic that comes from users who have discovered the website or app through various means, such as search engines, social media, referral links, or direct visits. Discover traffic is also sometimes referred to as organic traffic, as it is not driven by paid advertising or other forms of marketing. Discover traffic is often considered more valuable than other types of traffic because it indicates that the website or app is being found through natural means, rather than through paid promotion or advertising. Discover traffic is typically driven by search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, such as keyword optimization, content creation, and link building, as well as social media engagement and other forms of online visibility. Analyzing and optimizing discover traffic can be an important part of a digital marketing strategy, as it can help businesses to better understand how users are finding and interacting with their website or app, and to identify areas for improvement. Tracking discover traffic metrics, such as search engine rankings, referral traffic, and social media engagement, can help businesses to refine their SEO and content strategies and improve their overall online presence.

And this short list does not even include health information, tax forms, information on how to apply for benefits, specialized dictionaries, job and career information, corporate information, hobbies and sports, or information on stocks, mutual funds, and retirement income calculation.
The following section called Why Meta Search discusses the type of information you would like to find on the Internet.

Did any of the types of information or Web sites in the lesson match your own information needs and interests?
Did a need for information on a particular topic of interest to you lead you to take this course in searching on the Internet?
Take a minute or two to consider the topics of information you would like to find for yourself on the Internet.

1. If you are new to searching on the Internet and do not yet know where or how to find the information you want, write a list of what you would look for today if you knew how and where. The items on your list will give you opportunities to practice the search techniques and explore the search engines and directories that you will learn about.
2. If you have experience in searching for information on the Web, write down, or just reflect upon, what types of business-related information (industry salaries, for instance, alternative suppliers, or perhaps a professional or trade organization in your field) or personal-interest information has been most difficult to find.

After you complete an exercise that takes you to a new search engine or directory service, or one that demonstrates a new searching technique, try searching for a topic from your list. If you are keeping a list, glance at it as you complete a module and add any new categories of information that you have discovered through the exercises and that interest you.

A metasearch engine is a search tool that uses the data of another search engine to produce their own results from the Internet. Metasearch engines take input from a user and simultaneously send out queries to third party search engines for results. Sufficient data is gathered, formatted by their ranks and then presented to the users. Information stored on the World Wide Web is constantly expanding, making it increasingly impossible for a single search engine to index the entire web for resources. A metasearch engine is a solution to overcome this limitation.
The technique used is to combine multiple results from different search engines. Hence, a metasearch engine is able to enhance the experience of a user for information retrieval, as less effort is required in order to access more materials. A metasearch engine is efficient, as it is capable of generating a large volume of data, however, scores of websites stored on search engines are all different and this can draw in irrelevant documents. This synthesizing process attempts to tackle this issue and improve the engineering of a metasearch engine. There are many types of metasearch engines available to allow users to access specialized information in a particular field.

Social bookmarking is one of the most widely used social-media techniques. These services allow you to tag news stories, blogs, videos, audio files, web sites, and other Internet-based services to share with friends. Tagged sites are then ranked (and searchable) according to the number of tags received. Legacy bookmarking sites: del.icio.us, ma.gnolia.com, blinklist Examples of more modern social bookmarking sites include 1) Twitter, 2) Pinterest, 3) StumbleUpon, 4) Digg, 5) Reddit, and 6) Slashdot.

Social networks have gotten so pervasive that much like metasearch social thing, aggregators engines, social network aggregators have begun to arise. The concept socialstream, is to log in to one place and see all your updates from various social profilactic networks, photo sharing, and presence applications.