... allow you to search through huge indexes of Web sites created by computer programs called robots or spiders and display results according to relevance.

• Use search engines to find:

• Unique keywords or hard to find information

• Combinations of unique key words

• Pages buried deep in a Web site

• Check the search engine's HELP for specifics on how to search.
  Many search engines use the following search techniques:

• "double quotes" for phrase searching
  example: "lung cancer"

• + means the word or phrase must be in your results
  example: +diabetes+Hispanics

• * to find pages containing all forms of a truncated word
  example: postop* (searches for postoperative, postoperating, etc.)