Search engines race through large collections of resources on the Internet to search for information you request. No one is in charge of the Internet and there is no organization. Thus, there is no prescribed way to search. Each search engine has its own methods for searching. Therefore, to get the best results for a search it is necessary for you to read the "Help" comments on each search engine. Some popular search engines are Alltheweb, Yahoo, Altavista, and Google. Described below are some common criteria to enhance searching on the Internet.

• Boolean Operators (and, or, not)
  altitude and hypoxia (Both terms will be in each article retrieved)
  altitude or hypoxia (At least one of the terms will be in each article)
  altitude not hypoxia (In medical circles hypoxia is often linked with altitude. To exclude hypoxia because you are not looking for medical articles, use not)

• Truncating allows for variant spellings of search terms. Different databases require the use of different truncating symbols, such as the asterisk* or the question mark? (Read "Help" on each database to determine which symbol should be used. Note the symbol may be before or after the partial term:
  flor? (Retrieves all articles that have words beginning with "flor" (floral, florist, florida)
  *benzene (Retrieves all articles that have words ending with "benzene"

• Proximity operators near (N) for any order and within (W) for exact order may be combined with a number (to specify the number of words). The proximity operator is placed between the words that are to be searched. Type tax N5 reform to find results that would match "tax reform" as well as "reform of income tax." The words are in any order. Type tax W8 reform to find results that would match "tax reform" but would not match "reform of income tax." W8 will find the words if they are within 8 words of each other and in the exact order in which you typed them. If proximity operators are not used, the terms "tax" and "reform" may be scattered throughout an article, and may not necessarily refer to "tax reform." Therefore, you would retrieve many articles that may not have relevance to your subject "tax reform."