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The Deep Web

Deep Web vs. Surface Web

When you use a search engine like Google or Yahoo!, the information you get back is sometimes referred to as the "Surface Web" or the "Visible Web." However, there's a lot more information out there - There are millions of web pages that Google and Yahoo can't find. That's the Deep Web.

For example, a Google search will not pick up all information in the Library of Congress web pages. To find those web pages you would have to go to the Library of Congress home page and perform a search there.

Why can't you find those pages with your Google search? Deep web pages cannot be found by search engines like Google because they are within specialized databases; typical search engines just aren't able to access them. The Deep Web is made up of valuable material, like the information within the Library of Congress web pages. In January 2006, Marcus P. Zillman wrote "the Deep Web covers somewhere in the vicinity of 900 billion pages of information located through the world wide web in various files and formats that the current search engines on the Internet either cannot find or have difficulty accessing. The current search engines find about 8 billion pages".
Source: http://www.llrx.com/features/deepweb2006.htm

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