<P> Soon after, many search engines appeared and vied for popularity . These included Magellan, Excite, Infoseek, Inktomi, Northern Light, and AltaVista . Yahoo! was among the most popular ways for people to find web pages of interest, but its search function operated on its web directory, rather than its full - text copies of web pages . Information seekers could also browse the directory instead of doing a keyword - based search . </P> <P> In 1996, Netscape was looking to give a single search engine an exclusive deal as the featured search engine on Netscape's web browser . There was so much interest that instead Netscape struck deals with five of the major search engines: for $5 million a year, each search engine would be in rotation on the Netscape search engine page . The five engines were Yahoo!, Magellan, Lycos, Infoseek, and Excite . </P> <P> Google adopted the idea of selling search terms in 1998, from a small search engine company named goto.com . This move had a significant effect on the SE business, which went from struggling to one of the most profitable businesses in the internet . </P> <P> Search engines were also known as some of the brightest stars in the Internet investing frenzy that occurred in the late 1990s . Several companies entered the market spectacularly, receiving record gains during their initial public offerings . Some have taken down their public search engine, and are marketing enterprise - only editions, such as Northern Light . Many search engine companies were caught up in the dot - com bubble, a speculation - driven market boom that peaked in 1999 and ended in 2001 . </P>

From the help system note the procedure for using the browser to search the internet