Ok, I will admit I am one of the "did you Google it first?" crowd, but I TOTALLY get where Joe is coming from. I have been in the computer industry since before the PC was available (barely) and the truth is there is a "computer speak" that a person develops over time. When used, it seems so simple and straight forward that it is not uncommon to think folks who don't get it, are slow or lazy... SO not true.
I work with a LOT of ESL folks and I have to write manuals that they can read and comprehend while still not boring or being demeaning to English first folks. it is a challenge. Compu-speak is the same.
so, for a 30 second primer......
Google crawls the web reading and logging as much as it can about the various websites it finds. EVERY word.
When you do a search it compares that search to it's database of info. It is not actually "looking all over the web" when you search, it is just looking in it's database.
If I say search for sites with "all about me" (without the quotes) It will find the database records with the most "matches" to each individual word in the search. NOT in that order or even together. So the above search term would find the page in it's database with the highest count of the words "me" "about" and "all". a lot of people give computers more credit than they deserve. For example, in the above search, the computer has no "understanding" of the term "me". If i wanted to really do that search I would type the phrase (about "Steve Heeter") without the parentheses. the quotes tell the system to look for EXACTLY what is in between the quotes IN THAT ORDER AND CASE.
There is a LOT more that can be done to make searches "smarter" like putting a + in front of word that says this word is more important that the others and MUST be on the site for it to be shown, whereas without it is only gets as close a match as it can.
definitely not as simple as some folks think.
and as Joe pointed out, getting replies is the EASY part, weeding out the unwanted replies is the tricky part.
oh, and one last note. the first few replies are usually paid sponsored replies so look over the whole first page of results before clicking on the links