# Search Engines

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-engines/3335>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 20, 1999, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-engines/3335 "1999-09-20T22:33:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 1999, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-engines/3335/1 "1999-09-20T22:33:00Z")

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Pursuing the topics in General Questions today has left me with some questions of my own.

Has the internet broken? Are all search engines bereft of URLs?

I did a quick search today and got a perfectly acceptable answer to my query, but maybe I have Super-Duper-Extra-Cool Internet [SUP]TM[/SUP] , and some of today’s topic posters just haven’t yet downloaded the software from \<font color=“blue”\>Buyadictionary.com\</font\>.

## So what gives?

Livin’ on Tums, Vitamin E and Rogaine

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**Author:** ![Inky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d78d45/32.png) [@Inky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inky)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 1999, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-engines/3335/2 "1999-09-20T22:46:00Z")

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Search engines are great if you already know what your looking for.

For instance I aked about those bobbing, drinking toy birds with the colored mystery liquid in them. I would have had no problem finding out how they worked if I had known to look for the keywords:  
“dippy bird” “freon 11” “humidity” etc…

However, what little I knew to look for:

“drinking bird” “toy” and “bobbing” got me a kazillion pages of bubkis.

Equally. my inquiry on those “Funky blue flurescent light thingies you see in fast food joints” just points me to hundredes of poorly made Geocities sites from pissed off teenaged Mc Donalds workers (who all assure me that they spit in the milkshake mix).

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**Author:** ![Gaudere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 1999, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-engines/3335/3 "1999-09-20T22:52:00Z")

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_Some_ people seem to be asking simple questions that they appear to already know the answer to, or could be answered with little effort. Sort of a, “Hey, betcha _you_ don’t know this!!!” I am hoping that soon such things will stop and we will get more interesting and unusual questions. Inky, your questions seemed fine to me.

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“Eppur, si muove!” - Galileo Galilei

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**Author:** ![Nickrz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbce88/32.png) [@Nickrz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nickrz)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 1999, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-engines/3335/4 "1999-09-20T22:53:00Z")

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Try Google.

[http://www.google.com/](http://www.google.com/)

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**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 1999, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-engines/3335/5 "1999-09-20T23:07:00Z")

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Reply to Inky

I tried to find the refference using the Straight Dope search engine, because I knew the bird thing had been covered by Cecil before. As you said “Bubkis”. I didn’t reference it in a post to the topic, because I couldn’t locate it.