The various search engines catalogue the WWW in different ways, so it is often worth trying more than one search engine. There are also meta-search tools that can send your query to several search engines simultaneously: http://www.vironix.com

Whatever type of search you make, plan it before you start, trying to be as specific as you can. Searching for cars will be time consuming if you really want the UK price of a Ford Granada. Think of things you don't want, to narrow the search - Cars AND Granada NOT Spain, for example. If you are looking for software, use quotes ("aaaa.exe") to eliminate general references such as "aaaa is my favourite browser".

Make sure you know how the engine you are using works (they differ!) - if you need two words to occur on the same page, some require the words to be joined by + or AND, other require the words to be put "in quotes". Decide if you want to search Web pages or Usenet messages - Google is best for the latter: http://groups.google.com/