I read somewhere about a search engine called google that's supposed to be terrific. I tried it just now, and it seems pretty good.
For simple searches, I just put a few keywords in the address bar of my browser - that works with Netscape 4.0 and MSIE 5.0, but not with all earlier versions of these browsers.
I guess what I use most is an exact phrase search at hotbot. If that comes up with no resposnes, hotbot provides a link to Lycos and do an "advanced search." Lycos and Hotbot are based on the text found on the Web pages they scan, so it helps to have an exact phrase or a distinctive combination of words likely to be found only on the pages you want.
-Joe Offer-