Search engines search the web according to keywords or phrases that you specify.Some search tools use 'spiders' or crawlers to seach.Spiders are programs that 'crawl' across the web, automatically collecting the URL's of the web pages and indexing their information into catalogs.Other search tools use employees, to search for, index and provide keywords for web pages. The third way sites are indexed in a search tool is by user submission - let the user submit URL's.

So how and what do I do to find stuff ??

Try different search engines, because each search tool probably ranks the same web page differently. One search engine may fit a search better at one time and another engine may help in another case.
Find a search engine by typing its URL(http://www.yahoo.com) into the address field of your browser, hit enter. When the page of the search engine comes up, type in keywords or phrases in the text block and click the Search button. Be specific about your words, because a loose and unstructured search will bring up lots of irrelevant information.

Some search engines gives you a choice of how you want it to search for your keyword, such as look for "all the words" you key in, "any of the words", the "exact phrase" and lots more, make sure to check out all the search options. Also take a look at the categories listed on the main page, usually in blue underlined text, such as 'Arts and Humanities' , 'Business and Entertainment'.Clicking on one of these category headings will reveal lots of other sites dedicated to that subject. When you have filled in in your keywordsand made your search choices, click the Search key.

It will then open a page for you with the search results. Go through your results by clicking on the underlined text, using your Back and Forward icons in your browser to navigate.

Save the sites you like, by making it a Bookmark in Netscape Navigator from the Bookmark menu or a Favorite in Internet Explorer from the Favorites menu.Then you can access these sites very easy again when you want to.
The best way to learn, is to play around with it, you can't break anything.