A Web portal is a site that helps users locate information that is dispersed throughout the Web; a portal presents and organizes information regarding other sites. Typically, this is done through a search engine, which is a program that allows users to find documents based on keywords that they enter into a text field. Th e portal will scour the Web for pages that include the desired keywords and, almost instantaneously, present a list of relevant pages. Most portals do not divulge the specific weighting system used for compiling their search results or how sites are ranked. However, the indices are usually created using a variety of criteria, including information contained
