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world wide webHow many times a day do people say, “Just Google it.” Certainly, this writer uses the ubiquitous search engine to find information on the Internet.

Truth is, there is more to the World Wide Web than what can be discovered by searching search engine sites like Google, Bing and Yahoo. That’s because there is a deeper web lurking in cyberspace, one that is not well known. However, once uncovered and utilized, it can prove to be fertile ground for information that can not be found on a standard Internet search.

According to Stephen Lief, an eDiscovery consultant from New York, the deep web is also known as ‘The Invisible Web.’ Information found on the deep web is dynamically generated from data sources on the Internet. Whereas on the surface web, data is located and accessed via hyperlinks, data on the deep web is guarded by a search interface that can only be found by queries. The amount of data that can be found in the deep web far exceeds that which can be discovered on the surface web. Therefore, deep web crawlers must delve the data so it can be discovered, indexed and searched.

In their book, Going Beyond Google Again, authors Jane Devine and Francine Egger-Sider refer readers to a YouTube video offering an in-depth explanation of the deeper web and its impact on research. Additional videos regarding the deep web can also be found there.

Despite its potential impact on any kind of research, the deeper web is not yet a game changer, Lief says.

“My personal feeling is that the deep web has not yet had a significant impact on research, although the internet itself has substantially affected legal and back-ground research,” he says.

One way to locate the deep web is by surfing to www.google.com/scholar.

According to Google, Google Scholar is an online, freely accessible search engine that allows users to seek both physical and digital copies of articles. It searches a wide variety of sources, including academic publishers, universities, and preprint depositories.

Tami Kamin Meyer is an Ohio attorney and writer.
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