A searching procedure, particularly for searching on the Internet capacitance probe, using a search engine associated with a database and comprising submitting a request string comprising a locator (or URL) for the search engine and a search string including at least one search term. This will be an invalid address so an error signal is generated, and the generation thereof is monitored and used to trigger parsing of the request into the locator and the search string. The search string is then submitted to the search engine having the specified locator; and the data returned from the search engine is passed back to the user.
The information seeking process to find capacitance probe on the Web is fairly similar and notably different with classic searching in the classic information retrieval systems or pre-web online systems. It is similar because both are computer based and dealing with electronic information. However, it is considerably different because potential users and information sources in the Web environment are very different with pre-web online information systems.