Welcome to Bicycling Through History

Bicycling through History, A New Series on DVD

Learning to SEARCH on the Internet can be frustrating.

To conduct a Basic Search simply enter search words into the box provided on the search page and hit 'Enter' or 'Return' or 'Search'.

Search engines use sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. They will typically analyze millions of web pages, then look at what those pages have and compare it to your search word(s).

For example, if you want to find pages about Bicycling, simply type 'bicycling' into the search box and click to search.

To further restrict a search, just include more terms, like 'bicycling history'.

An advanced technique is to use the "+" sign to include stop words in your search. Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign. You can also include the "+" sign in phrase searches.

For example, to search for Bicycling through History: type

bicycling +through +history

What about capitalization? Does it matter? . . . . . . Well, No.

A good search engine is not case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for "george washington", "George Washington", and "gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN" should all return the same results.

We recommend Google because it has been found to produce the most effective search results.

Here is how it works: Google runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware and software. The speed you experience can be attributed in part to the efficiency of their search algorithm and partly to the thousands of low cost PC's they have networked together to create a superfast search engine.

The heart of the system was developed by computer scientists at Stanford University. It relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Google's complex, automated methods make human tampering with results extremely difficult. And though they do run relevant ads above and next to their results, Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a higher position). A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search.

If, for some reason, you are not satisfied with results from Google, you can always try some of the other search engines, or simply compare results.

There are other search engines. If you find a better one, submit it.

Bicycling Through History is fun. Search it with friends.