Search engines collect words from Internet sites and store them in a database along with pointers to the web pages where the words were found. Six search engines--AltaVista, Excite, Hotbot, Infoseek, Lycos, and Northern Light, are considered the largest and are good examples of most features and capabilities of other search engines.It's always a good idea to check the Help section of the search engine to learn about the service's policies and syntax.

AltaVista is often chosen as the favorite in user surveys. It's database has more than 140 million pages. Alta Vista's search engine compares your search terms to all of the words in the database, and presents you with an information map of all related words in those documents.

Excite has indexed 55 million web pages in its database. It offers two types of searching--concept and syntax-based searches. In concept searching, Excite's search engine extracts concepts from documents--it looks for words you entered in all the documents in its database and takes note of other words and phrases that frequently accompany those words you entered. Then, it presents you with documents it considers relevant to your query, whether the documents contain the words you entered or not. This feature is turned on only for simple searches.

Hotbot indexes 110 million documents. The search engine was bought by Lycos last fall and has been redesigned to give more page space to shopping sites. Hotbot works fairly well for general questions, but doesn't do well for very specialized searches.

Infoseek has both a subject directory and an indexed database of Web pages. Run a search at Infoseek and it will recommend topics from its directory and list the Web pages. The pages are grouped by site so you don't have to scroll through long lists. Infoseek also offers to find similar pages to the one you have just identified.

Lycos was recently redesigned and is the most commercial of the sites. Shopping dominates the main page, and advertisers dominate the search results.

Northern Light entered the search engine field in 1997 to challenge the established search services. Its database currently indexes 67 million web pages and is growing. After entering your search, Northern Light creates Custom Folders which analyze and group the pages by subject, type, source and language. It's Special Collection of 3,400 magazines, journals, newspapers and newswires can be searched and the summaries viewed free of charge. You pay only for the articles you order--generally $1 to $4. Northern Light is excellent for information on technologies.

Here is a comparison chart that highlights the features of the six search engines: