9.6 FINDING THINGS ON THE WEB


Like Gopher, the Web is a fascinating place to explore -- just keep 
following links to see where they take you.  In fact, Lynx and other Web 
programs are often called "browsers" for just this reason. Eventually, 
however, you might want to find something specific on the Web and you 
might want to find it now. 

Unlike with Gopher and Veronica, there is no single way to search the Web.  
Instead, several organizations around the world have developed different 
types of databases that let you find Web documents and hyperlinks.  The 
ones that follow are all fairly powerful yet relatively easy to use.  
Because they all seem to use different methods for finding things, it can 
sometimes be worthwhile to try several of them as part of your search -- 
you'll find different resources with each.   An added bonus is that 
often, the people who maintain one search "engine" will provide quick 
links to the others, making it easy for you to get from one to the other. 

One of the more useful systems is EINet Galaxy, run by the 
Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp. in Austin, Texas, both 
because it's easy to use and because it lets you search for both Web and 
Gopher resources. 

To get to it, hit a lower-case g within Lynx and then type:

     http://galaxy.einet.net

When you connect, you'll actually see what looks an awful lot like a 
table of contents or index for the entire Internet -- dozens of entries 
on broad topics from architecture to sociology.  If you're not in a hurry, 
these entries can prove an interesting introduction to just what's 
avaialable these days.  But today, we are in a hurry, so keep hitting 
enter until you see something that looks like this: 


   Search for: ____________________ Search Clear selections [40 hits_]
   ( )Galaxy Pages ( )Galaxy Entries ( )World-wide Web ( )Gopher
   ( )Hytelnet


      Up - Home - Help - Search - Top -- EINet Galaxy

First, notice the "Search" in the bottom list of options.  If you moved 
your cursor to that and hit enter, you'd be given a list of links to 
other searchable databases of Web resources.  But for now, move your 
cursor (with the down-arrow key) until it's on the dashes.  Here is where 
you type in the word or words you're looking for (don't worry about 
capitalization). Now it gets slightly tricky (because the system was 
designed with mouse users in mind).  Hit your down-arrow key until you 
get to the space before "Galaxy Entries."  Hit enter, and you'll see an 
asterisk appear. As you might surmise, you're telling the system to 
search for your keyword among "Galaxy Entries" (which are those indexed 
listings we just passed over). Hit your down arrow again to move to the 
"World-wide Web" entry and hit enter again. Do it once more for Gopher.  
Now use your up key to move backwards, until the word "Search" is 
highlighted.  Hit enter. 

EINet Galaxy now starts a search of its database, looking for any 
potential matches in both Web and Gopher documents.  Let's say you were 
searching for information about the King, ol' Elvis himself.  Had you 
used "Elvis" as your search word, something like this would come back: 


   Galaxy Entry Results - for `` elvis''

          4 documents found

     * ELVIS+ WWW server from RUSSIA - Score: 1000 Size: 29
     * Elvis Aron Presley Home Page - Score: 1000 Size: 28
     * Elvis Aron Presley Home Page - Score: 1000 Size: 28
     * The Elvis Costello home page - Score: 1000 Size: 28

   World-wide Web Results - for `` elvis''

          28 documents found
(Option list)  Hit return and use arrow keys and return to select option

Each of the lines starting with an asterisk turns out to be a hyperlink 
to a particular Web server.  Curious about the first one, you move your 
cursor there and hit enter -- and discover that a group of Russian 
computer programmers have set up a software company they've decided to 
call ELVIS+.  OK.  So you hit your left arrow key to get back to the 
EINet Galaxy search results.  Try the next one, and you find yourself 
reading about the King.  The "score" represents the database's attempt to 
show you how relevant a particular item is to your search.  If the word 
you're looking for appears in a document's title or first paragraph, for 
example, it will score higher in the databases 1-to-1000 ranking than if 
it did not appear until the very last paragraph. 

Another good Web info-searcher is David Filo and Jerry Yang's Yahoo server 
at Stanford University (it stands for something along the lines of "Yet 
Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle").  It'll remind you of EINet 
Galaxy -- it, too, provides a table-of-contents type of interface to Web 
(no Gopher) services, along with a more specific search tool.  You'll 
want to connect to: 

     http://akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo

One of your choices in a menu bar across the bottom of the screen will be 
"Search."  Select it, and you'll get a small form similar to EINet 
Galaxy's.  Although Yahoo will let you find all sorts of resources, it 
really shines in the area of online businesses and the services they 
offer.

Lycos at Carnegie-Mellon University is a third search system, which is 
interesting in part because of the way new entries are added to its 
database.  Part of Lycos consists of an automated "web crawler" that 
periodically, well, crawls around the Web looking for new servers and 
documents.  It then adds the information to the database.  Connect to 
http;//lycos.cs.cmu.edu.  You'll be given a choice of searching Lycos1, 
Lycos2 or Lycos3.  These are different computers, but each contains the 
same database, so it doesn't really matter which one you choose (unless 
one doesn't work, then try one of the others).  You'll then get a page 
with these choices: 

   Lycos Search Language description
   Form-based search with options (same database)
   Register your own URLs with Lycos or Delete your own URLs
   Lycos: Frequently Asked Questions

Select the second one and hit enter, which will bring up the search form.
It will then return a list of potentially relevant documents -- along
with snippets from those documents to help you decide whether you want
to look at them.  By default, the computer will only respond with the 
first 10 matches it finds.  You can change that via a setting in the 
search form.