You start by typing your request into the 'dialog box' at the top of most search engines. Type in the item you seek with only the most pertinent words. Don't enter whole sentences-- only the nouns, adjectives, and verbs that are crucial in defining your search. There are tricks to getting better results in your search. Adding something called a Boolean term to your search can improve your results. Read this article for more on Boolean terms.

Beginner tip: once your entry is in the dialog box, you must then click on the 'search' button located next to the box or hit the enter key on your keyboard. Otherwise the engine doesn't know you've finished entering your topic and it will continue to wait for its task.

The search engine starts its job by combing through its listings of websites. No search engine has every site in its listings. Rather, they categorize a portion of the Web. That's why you may want to search using a couple of different search engines or use a metasearch tool (see the Metasearch link below).
The search engine then returns a list of sites it deems appropriate. Through one method or another (it varies depending on the search engine) the listings are ranked with those perceived as most relevant listed at the top.

If one of these listings interests you, click on the portion of the listing that's underlined and blue. This is an indication that it's a link (a direct connection) to the website it's describing. If the site you are then transported to doesn't suit your needs, use the back button at the top of your browser to get back to the list of results that the search engine provided you.

To find out about the best search engines, read David Spark's article.