Embodiments of the present invention are directed to acquiring information from the worldwide web, organizing information acquired from the worldwide web, and using the acquired and organized information to facilitate web-page searching, web-page browsing, and other worldwide-web-based activities. In one embodiment of the present invention, a database of concept objects is created from an initial set of semantic objects and from hyperlink information obtained from web pages by one or more web crawlers. The initial set of semantic objects is processed using hyperlink based objects created by the web crawler. The processed semantic objects are then associated with additional hyperlink-based objects to create a concept-object database. In certain embodiments of the present invention, the concept-object database can be further refined and supplemented in an automated fashion by additional web crawling, subsequent association of hyperlink-based objects with concept objects, and creation of new concept objects as well as by user input to, and editing of, the concept-object database. The concept-object database may be employed, in various embodiments of the present invention, to facilitate web browsing, web-page searching, and other worldwide-web-base activities.