7. Conclusion

Between the first search engines, which appeared in 1993, and those of today, the biggest changes have been in relevance algorithms, which are constantly striving to become more and more efficient, and gradually evolving towards notions of the "Semantic Web". Google is certainly the engine most thirsty for innovation in this respect, and it is the most relevant of all the tools available on the Web today. So, has it won the day when it comes to finding information on the Web? Perhaps not entirely. In fact, there are three phases to an information search on the Web:

• Step 1: The web surfer has a search in mind. Given the way today's search engines work, his job is to find the keywords that best characterize his quest;

• Step 2: after entering these keywords in an appropriate form, the user asks the engine to find...