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One small advice. No matter what search engine you use - first it is important to stop and sort out in your mind what sort of information you actually want. Decide what sort of information you require and what sort of information you don't want prior to start searching using a search engine. Otherwise you will be lost in your search.

But I would also suggest that you use a general search engine first such as Google or Yahoo to run a general search on the topic. Once you see what kind of material is available, you can decide on further specialized searches.

Well, there are no fixed rules to follow when picking a search engine. What's important to know however is that there are different kinds of search engines - general search engines, specialised search engines, meta search engines etc. These search engines serves different purposes.
You need to decide what you want to know first before selecting an appropriate search engine.

How do I pick the best search engine for my task? Any insight on this?