One way is to create subject directories of intranet data that present a highly structured way to find information. They let you browse through information by categories and subcategories, such as marketing,computer,  personnel, sales, research and development, budget, competitors, and so on. In a Web browser, you click on a category, and you are then presented with a series of subcategories. Depending on the size of the subject directory, there may be several such layers of subcategories. At some point, when you get to the subcategory you're looking for, you'll be presented with a list of relevant documents. To download or read those documents, you click on links to them.

Another popular way of finding information-and in the long run for intranets, probably more useful-is to use search engines, also called search tools( Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista e.t.c.). Search engines operate differently from subject directories. They are essentially massive databases that index all the information found on the intranet-and can include information found on the Internet as well. Search engines don't present information in a hierarchical fashion. Instead, you search through them as you would a database, by typing in keywords or sentence that describe the information you want.

Intranet search engines are usually built out of three components: An agent, spider, or crawler that crawls across the intranet gathering information; a database, which store all the information the spiders gather; and a search tool, which people use as an interface to search through the database.


Searching and cataloging tools, sometimes called search engines, can be used to help people find the information they need. Intranet search tools, such as agents, crawlers, spiders,  and robots, are used to gather information about the documents available on an intranet. These search tools are programs that search Web pages, extract the hypertext links on those pages, and automatically index the information they find to build a database. Each search engine has its own set of rules guiding how documents are gathered.