Keeping the terms straight

Here are a few additional terms that you see scattered throughout the book:

Search site: A Web site at which you can search through some kind of
index or directory of Web sites, or perhaps both an index and directory.
(In some cases, search sites allow you to search through multiple
indices.) Google.com, AOL.com, and EarthLink.com are all search sites.

Search system: An organization that possesses a combination of software,
hardware, and people that is used to index or categorize Web sites — they
build the index or directory you search through at a search site. Google is
a search system, but AOL.com and EarthLink.com are not. In fact, if you go
to AOL.com or EarthLink.com and search, you actually get Google search
results.

Google and the Open Directory Project provide search results to hun­dreds of search sites. In fact, most of the world’s search sites get their search results from elsewhere

Search results: The information returned to you (the results of your

search) when you go to a search site and search for something. Remember

that in many cases, the search results don’t come from the search site

you’re using, but from some other search system.