Activity 4: Searching the Internet

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using search engines?

ADVANTAGES:

•           -It helps to communicate, information, entertainment, services and E-Commerce. For communication, we can communicate in a fraction of second with a person who is sitting in the other part of the world. Today for better communication, we can avail the facilities of e-mail; we can chat for hours with our loved ones. it has become very easy to establish a kind of global friendship where you can share your thoughts, can explore other cultures of different ethnicity. For information, Information is probably the biggest advantage internet is offering. The Internet is a virtual treasure trove of information. Any kind of information on any topic under the sun is available on the Internet. The search engines like Google, yahoo is at your service on the Internet. You can almost find any type of data on almost any kind of subject that you are looking for.For Entertainment, Downloading games, visiting chat rooms or just surfing the Web are some of the uses people have discovered. There are numerous games that may be downloaded from the Internet for free.

 DISADVANTAGES

• Theft of Personal information
  If you use the Internet, you may be facing grave danger as your personal information such as name, address, credit card number etc. can be accessed by other culprits to make your problems worse. 
• Spamming:
  Spamming refers to sending unwanted e-mails in bulk, which provide no purpose and needlessly obstruct the entire system. Such illegal activities can be very frustrating for you, and so instead of just ignoring it, you should make an effort to try and stop these activities so that using the Internet can become that much safer.
  Virus threat
  Virus is nothing but a program which disrupts the normal functioning of your computer systems. Computers attached to internet are more prone to virus attacks and they can end up into crashing your whole hard disk, causing you considerable headache. 
• Pornography:
  This is perhaps the biggest threat related to your children’s healthy mental life. A very serious issue concerning the Internet. There are thousands of pornographic sites on the Internet that can be easily found and can be a detrimental factor to letting children use the Internet.
  
  Though, internet can also create havoc, destruction and its misuse can be very fatal, the advantages of it outweigh its disadvantages. 

source: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/advantages-disadvantages-internet.html

2. Compare and contrast individual search engines and search meta search engines
 
         -a search engine works by sending out a spider to fetch as many documents as possible. Another program, called an indexer, then reads these documents and creates an index based on the words contained in each document. Each search engine uses a proprietary algorithm to create its indices such that, ideally, only meaningful results are returned for each query.

        -A meta search engine is a search engine that queries many different search engines and combines the results from all of them, or else displays the results separately but in one place. A meta search engine does not actually crawl the web itself, like a real search engine, instead relying on data gathered by other search engines. The meta search engine has been around almost as long as search engines themselves, and some people find them preferable to using a single search engine, as they allow for a wider range of results.


3. When is it appropriate to use a search engine and When is it appropriate to use a search or subject directory?

•  It is appropriate to use a search engine when a person wants to find some information that is reliable and to provide you with results that are clear and easy to read. A basic search result will include a title that links to the webpage, a short description or an actual excerpt from the webpage, and the page's URL.

4. What is an invisible web or "deep web"?

• Is it some kind of Area 52-ish, X-Files deal that only those with stamped numbers on their foreheads can access? Well, not exactly. The term "invisible web" mainly refers to the vast repository of information that search engines and directories don't have direct access to, like databases. Unlike pages on the visible Web (that is, the Web that you can access from search engines and directories), information in databases is generally inaccessible to the software spiders and crawlers that create search engine indexes. 

 5.  How do you find an invisible web?

• Most of the information on the Invisible Web is maintained by academic institutions, and has a higher quality than search engine results. There are "academic gateways" that can help you find this information. However, it's not always easy to find what you're looking for with a search engine, especially if you're looking for something a bit complicated or obscure. 

 6.  Why are these web pages not available in search engines or subject directories?

• because the content of the files or information are protected by passwords and the data are for private use only such as the social networking sites, blogger and other sites which require an account for personal or private use.