What is Surface Web?

This is the internet we all know and love. Some researchers call the Surface Web we use for everyday activities like social networking and reading news the Common Web. (If you are a conspiracy theorist, you may be interested in the eight levels of the web, right down to Level 8, “The final boss of the universe.”) Here, conventional web spiders use sophisticated algorithms to collect data from hyperlinked pages and you browse it from search engines like Google or Yahoo.

The Surface Web is, ironically, home to some of the Deep Web. Any web page that requires credentials to access is, technically, part of the Deep Web because a search engine cannot access that content. So, what about a site like Facebook, to which you have to log in but which renders pages that are visible to search engines even when someone is not logged in? In 2007, Facebook opened up some of its listings to search engines. In addition, Facebook links can be indexed, e.g. if there is a page somewhere with your Facebook URL, a search engine WILL be able to index it.

• Also known as Visible Web, Indexed web, and Clearnet
• A fraction of the entire internet with +-19 Terabytes of information
• A handful of the downsides: Trolls and stalkers; exploitation, pornography and violence; addictive, distracting and time-wasting; identify theft and hacking; spam, advertising and intrusion of privacy (Google probably knows your shoe size
• Edit By Hammad Munir