When you’re browsing the Internet, search engines can be very useful for finding pages that you don’t know the address for or for looking up information, but if you already know the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) then you can get to the page much quicker by not using a search engine.

In the example below we want to log into Facebook, we know that the URL is facebook.com so we can type that directly into the address bar of our browser.


When you press enter, you’ll go straight to Facebook.


If you did a search for Facebook instead, you’ll then have the find the correct result and then click on it, so it’s twice as much work to get to the site.


Searching for things instead of going to the site directly can also cause problems if you’re looking for software to install. For example there are a lot of fake anti-virus programs on the Internet and if you search for AVG (for example) there’s every chance that you will end up on a fake site designed to install malicious software on your PC and end up getting a virus instead of installing software to keep them out.

There are also websites that aren't indexed by search engines so will never show up in a search and the only way to access these sites is to type the address in directly.

If you are looking for a specific download, it's always best to go directly to the supplier's website so that you know you're getting the actual software that you're looking for.

If you use our guide on creating bookmarks here http://tekeez.me.uk/favourites You can quickly build up a list of the websites you visit and get back to them quickly without having to search for them each time.