Imagine that the Internet is a huge shopping mall: boutiques, eateries, shoe stores. You are looking for something specific in this Internet mall, but there's no map or guide to all the shops or sites that are out there. You need help.
Here comes your guide, your personal shopper for the Internet-- a search engine.

A search engine keeps a huge list of websites and the information they contain. When you go to a search engine, you enter the terms you're looking for. The search engine tries to match those terms with terms from one of the websites it has categorized. So if I am looking for San Francisco golf courses, I type in "San Francisco golf courses" and the search engine tries to find a site that has those words listed on its pages.

For more on how search engines work read Martin Sargent's article on search engine strategies.

If you've heard that search engines give results not suiotable children, read our article on how to keep Web surfing safe for kids.