Deep Web (also called the Deepnet),[1] Invisible Web,[2] or Hidden Web[3] is the portion of World Wide Web content that is not indexed by standard search engines.
Mike Bergman, founder of BrightPlanet and credited with coining the name,[4] said that searching on the internet today can be compared to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is deep and therefore missed.[5] Most of the web's information is buried far down on sites, and standard search engines do not find it. Traditional search engines cannot see nor retrieve content in the deep web. The portion of the web that is indexed by standard search engines is known as the surface web. As of 2001,[needs update] the deep web was several orders of magnitude larger than the surface web.[6] An analogy of an iceberg has frequently been used to represent the division between surface web and deep web respectively.