Setting Up Your Basic Investment

Search engines are commercial enterprises that collect and index Web pagesor Web page titles. You can use them to help you sift through all the Webpages out there so that you can find the information you need.

Some of these enterprises review the sites they collect, and others providesite information unfiltered and unedited.

Some search engines (like Yahoo! atwww.yahoo.com) are hierarchical indexes and use subject listings that aresimilar to the card catalog in a library. Often, you can search hierarchicalindexes by keyword (a word that sums up or describes the item or conceptthat you’re seeking) and by topic.

Knowing how to use a search engine is a basic Internet skill. Currently, morethan 600 different search engines exist on the Net. These Internet tools canbe divided into two categories: metasearch engines and search engines।

Metasearch engines

Metasearch engines enable you to enter a single search term to query manyindividual search engines. This kind of all-in-one shopping is used to matchyour inquiry to the millions of Web pages on the Internet. Metasearch enginesoften have different approaches to presenting your results. Some metasearchengines just query a wide variety of search engines and report your resultswithout you having to go to several search engines.

Other metasearch enginesbypass existing search engines and query multiple online sources for yoursearch results. Here are some examples of metasearch engines:

Dogpile (www.dogpile.com) searches the Web, Usenet newsgroups, FTPsites (sites for downloading software and data via FTP — the file transferprotocol), weather information, stock quotes, business news, and othernews wires. (For more information about Usenet newsgroups, see thesection “Understanding How Newsgroups Can Help You,” later in thischapter.) This site also includes a Web catalog.

Momma (www.momma.com) simultaneously queries a series of searchengines and properly formats the words and syntax for each sourcebeing probed. The search results are then organized into a uniformformat and presented by relevance and source.

Metacrawler (www.metacrawler.com/index.html) works like Dogpilebut doesn’t search Usenet newsgroups and FTP (file transfer protocol)sites.

Search results aren’t annotated.

SurfWax (www.surfwax.com) allows users to put together search sets.For example, an “Investor” SearchSet can include The Wall Street Journal,CNNfn, The New York Times, and so on. You can also use tools for exploringsearch results. For example, SiteSnaps allows you to quickly view pagecontent, and ContextZooming allows you to search highlighted terms.FocusWords offers suggestions about how you can narrow or broadenyour search. Finally, you can use an InfoCubby to save your search resultsfor later retrieval. SurfWax offers three levels of service (free, silver, andgold). With your free registration, you receive the free level of service thatincludes three SearchSets of up to 15 sources each. Silver and Goldsubscribers pay $24 and $60 per year, respectively. Each registered levelhas access to all of SurfWax’s capabilities; the difference is the extent ofpermitted uses. (Firm pricing is available on a custom basis.)

Profusion (www.profusion.com) allows you to search one, some, orall of the listings from AltaVista, About, AOL, Lycos, Raging Search,WiseNut, Metacrawler, MSN, Adobe PDF, LookSmart, Netscape, Teoma,and AllTheWeb. You can fine-tune your search by selecting your searchtype, the number of results per page, the number of results per source,and when you want the search to timeout. You can narrow your searchby looking into vertical search groups, such as Business or Finance.

Vivisimo (www.vivisimo.com) technology was developed by researchersat Carnegie Mellon University. Vivisimo doesn’t index the Web; it simultaneouslysearches several major search engines and directories (suchas Fast, MSN, Yahoo!, AltaVista, Lycos, Open Directory, Excite, andWebCrawler). The Vivisimo technology then groups results into clustersof titled folders that best fit the query.

Popular search engines

Search engines are trustworthy Internet programs that match the words inyour query to words on the Internet. Each search engine is a competitive,commercial enterprise with different databases, search programs, and features.Everyone has a favorite search engine. The search engine that is best isthe one that works the best for you.

Search engines employ spiders or crawlers (robot programs) that constantlyseek new information on the Internet. These robot programs index and categorizetheir findings and then let you probe their lists with keywords. Theengine shows your search results with short descriptions and hyperlinks.Just click the hyperlink to go to the Web page you seek.

Personalized search engines

With more than two billion Web pages, yoursearch for investment information is likely todredge up many articles that are outdated orsimply not relevant.

One way to increase yourtreasure-to-trash ratio is to use a personalizedsearch engine. My Yahoo! (my.yahoo.com)allows users to set up profiles for (among otherthings) specific news topics and a stock portfolio.

The My Excite Web site (my.excite.com)includes much of the same personalization featuresas My Yahoo! With your free registration,you can select page colors, settings, content,and layout (two columns or three?).

Here are a few of the more popular search engines on the Net:

Excite (www.excite.com) enables you to browse many subject categories,such as investing. It uses a combination of concept (a generalidea) and keyword (a specific word in the Web page) searches, so theresults are usually pretty good. If you’re unsatisfied with your findings,click the Excite Metasearch link at the bottom of the page for moreresults.

Google (www.google.com) is currently ranked as the number-onesearch engine. It has the largest amount of the Internet indexed. Googleoffers the Google Toolbar, a quick-and-easy-to-install toolbar that automaticallyappears along with the Internet Explorer toolbar to increaseyour ability to speedily find information on the Net.

MSN (search.msn.com) enables you to set preferences to automaticallycorrect spelling errors, select the number of results per page, and determinewhether search responses should include summaries. Additionally,you can search from any one of MSN’s international Web sites. If you’reunfamiliar with search engines, click Help to get the advice you need.Additionally, MSN has a new beta that is supposed to be a “Googlebeater,” a search engine, index, and crawler. For more information seebeta.search.msn.com/default.aspx?FORM=HPRE.

Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) is a popular starting point. This directorysearch engine includes a vast array of subject directories, categories,and special services, such as People Search, Weekly Picks, What’s NewThis Week, Yahoo! Loan Center, Finance Yahoo!, and Real Estate Yahoo!