Using Web Tools to Effectively Search and Find the Information You Really Need
A whole world of information is literally at your fingertips when you have Internet access. There are approximately more than a billion webpages are on the Web, and another million added each day! To sift through them, you can choose from about 8,000 different web search engines, directories, and/or meta-search sites on the Internet, as well as Online Answer services and web search utility programs.If you are relatively new to the use of search engines, or are you not sure how to get started or just need a quick refresher, here's the skinny --everyday surfing tips and techniques that will help you get the most from your time spent online.
Online searchable listings of web pages, usually referred to as "search engines", are the most common and best known method of obtaining information about web sites -- they are free to use and easy to access. Search engines will provide you with a listing of direct links to sites that contain or relate to certain pre-selected words or phrases that you type in as keywords in your search. Search engines are, for the most part, updated monthly, weekly, or daily to include new sites. Authors of web pages fill out a form to submit their page to each specific search engine. Most search engines use "spiders", "crawlers" or "robots" that "crawl" around the web indexing web pages they encounter. Generally no human decides of a page belongs in the search or not. Web pages are indexed based upon words used within the page, links to or from the page, and specially formatted keywords authors put in their pages. Because authors can put any keywords they wish, some pages that come in up searches seem to have nothing to do with the topic you had in mind. Meta Search Engines are super-searchers that will search several other search engines at once.
Directories are hieracharchal menus with broad categories at the top and many levels of more specific choices to follow until you get to direct links to specific web pages. Originally directories were browsable but not searchable. Today, many search engines such as Yahoo also offer directory listings to browse. Another difference in directories is that many are moderated. A web page author submits their link to a directory. A human views the page and decides which topic the page is best suited for. An example of a moderated directory is http://www.about.com. Due to the massive number of pages added to the web daily, there are also unmoderated directories such as http://www.geocities.com.
Another type of web tool is a web database. Examples of web databases include Medline and Bigfoot or MapQuest. These web pages are actually small programs that are linked to databases. When you request information, the web page queries the database where the actual information is stored. It is important to remember that web pages appear in search engines based upon words used within the page or keywords added to the page. For this reason, information in the databases themselves can't be found by regular search engines. Some generalized searchable databases include Lycos and AltaVista If you've never tried a searchable web database, you're missing part of what the web has to offer. Try constrasting search results from different search engines.
Often people simply refer to all of the various web tools as "Search Engines." For more information about how the various types of search tools work, please refer to The Invisible Web for Educators" by Ken Wiseman.
*LookSmart (http://altavista.com) --you can personalize this search engine to retrieve the following in your hometown: newspapers, magazines, restaurants, weather reports, movie and TV listings, etc.
*B>NetSearcher (http://www.netsearcher.com) is a specialized search engine just for Web Developers and Internet professionals.
*Deja.com (Now partnered with Google Groups): (http://www.groups.google.com) -- searches for Usenet discussion groups and topics.
*FinanceWise: (http://www.financewise.com) --the first search engine to focus specifically on financial-only content of interest to the financial world
*FastSearch: (http://www.fastsearch.com) --this site includes links to 4 topical search engines: Law, Medical, Real Estate, and Sports.
*MediaBuilder: (http://www.mediabuilder.com/)..looking for certain Graphics, Audio or Video files? The check out the specialized search engines "Mediabuilder" has listed under these topics.
*Fast FTP Search: (http://www.ftpsearchengines.com/ -- this site allows you to search for specific types of files (.jpg, .gif, .exe., .zip, .mp3, .mid, .au., .ra...)
*Ask ERIC (http://www.askeric.org/Eric/) ERIC is an Educational Research database with more than 1 million abstracts of documents and journal articles on education research and practice. This tool searches ERIC based upon the criteria you supply.
*Librarians Index to the Internet (http://lii.org) This excellent collection of scholarly indices is the Library of California - Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE.
*BarPoint (http://www.barpoint.com) is a "product-specific search engine." You enter the 12- or 13-digit UPC (Universal Product Code) barcode of any item into the site and receive in return prices, reviews, and chances to buy that product from some of the 350 different affiliated stores. So far, the product is in use for books, audio books, video, DVD, music, and computers. In the future, it may extend to everything from cars to vitamins and pet supplies.
*FindArticles (http://www.findarticles.com): Trying to find a magazine or journal article you read, but don't remember in which publication you read it? FindArticles search engine lets you search your way through a vast archive of published articles from over 300 magazines and journals for free. It is constantly updated and contains articles from magazines and journals dating back to 1998. Each of the hundreds of thousands of articles in FindArticles can be read in its entirety and printed at no cost.
Search engines specific to Science and Computer Science topics:*Yahooligans at http://www.yahooligans.com
This subset of Yahoo serves up kid-safe sites.
-*Ask Jeeves for Kids at http://www.ajkids.com, is a fast and easy way to find answers to questions. Ask Jeeves for Kids allows you to ask a question in plain English and, after interacting with you to confirm the question, Ask Jeeves for Kids takes you to one and only one web site that answers your question.
-*KidsClick! at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick! is backed by librarians, and lists about 5,000 web sites in various categories.
-*AnimalSearch at http://www.animalsearch.net offers quality information on animals of all sorts.
If you'd like to stay up on the latest search engine news, stop by http://www.searchenginewatch.com
Finding a search engine that meets your needs is only half the battle -- now HOW do you actually perform a precise search without getting back 67,432 pages of hits?
If you passed the logic portion of your high school mathematics regimen, then you'll undoubtedly meet with success by using Boolean Operators in your searches. Boolean logic is a symbolic logic system invented by French mathematician George Boole. The main Boolean operators are OR, AND, NOT, and NEAR. Most search engines recognize these words as Boolean operators rather than text strings. When used between two search terms,
OR retrieves hits that contain one or both of the terms.
AND retrieves hits that contain both of the terms.
NOT retrieves hits that contain the preceding term but do not contain the following term.
NEAR retrieves hits on which both terms appear proximate to one another.
Most search engines default to the OR operator when one isn't specified (i.e., when there is just a space between search terms) such as AltaVista, Excite, LookSmart, Lycos and Yahoo!, although some default to AND, such as AOL.com, Google, HotBot, and Northern Light.
In addition, most search engines recognize the + and - symbols as replacements for the AND and NOT operators, respectively. If you'd like to search for an exact phrase without the default operator mucking things up, simply place the phrase in quotation marks.
Here are some additional basic tips that apply to all searches that will ensure your search won't be in vain:
*Put phrases in quotes -- "Chicago Bears" will get you info on the Chicago Bears team, while just typing Chicago Bears will get you info on the city and the animal!
*Be as precise as possible in defining the keywords for your search. For example, search for "carburetor repairs", not "car repairs". Searching for "baseball" will bring up millions of pertinent pages. Instead, be specific, "Little league baseball at Boston's Fenway Park."
*Use Boolean expressions. This is a search that involves the use of Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, NEAR, +, -). In a Boolean search, you can use these operators to refine the scope of your search. Consider the examples below:
To Find Web Pages Containing:
The word boats or the word cars, use: boats cars
The word boats and the word cars use: +boats +cars; or: boats AND cars
The word boats but not the word cars use: +boats -cars; or: boats NOT cars
The word arthritis as well as nutrition use: arthritis NEAR/25 nutrition (plug in a number to specify the desired range in which both words appear. In this example, both words appear within 25 words of each other in either direction)
*Use accented characters in words like résumé and piñata to get better results.
Another way is to make believe you are the host of the game show "Jeopardy" and phrase the question in the form of an answer. Think about how the question would be answered on a web page, and pick out a short key phrase from that answer phrase. Pick out as few words as you can for this key phrase, but still hold the meaning and uniqueness of the phrase.
Examples:
-Question - "What was the highest grossing movie of 1996?"
-Answer - "The highest grossing move of 1996 was . . ."
-Key phrase - "highest grossing movie of 1996"
-Question - "How many inches are there in one meter?"
-Answer - "There are ... inches in a meter."
-Key phrase - "inches in a meter"
Be sure to enter the key phrase surrounded by quotes. In most full-text tools, surrounding a search with quotes forces a phrase search. If the search tool uses something else to indicate a phrase search, use it instead. If this search is not successful, then think about other words or variant spellings (such as color and colour) that could be used in the phrase and try again. In the examples above, other key phrases are "top grossing movie of 1996" and "inches per meter". If this doesn't work, try the same searches without quotes. This will broaden the search, and should point to you pages that might contain the desired answer.
Once you get to a website's page, find the phrase on the page. It might not be apparent at first why a page was listed as containing the phrase, but the phrase will be there (if not, it was probably in a previous incarnation of the page). Many times, the phrase may be hidden deep within paragraphs of text, but the phrase should be on the page somewhere.
Copyright 2002 Susan Feinman & Roberta Bush