4/19/2005 Jim DeCostaADM Humphreys College

Researching on the Internet

When in doubt just Google-It!

Search Engines / Directories

Search Engines come in all colors (bias) and sizes (speed) Some limit their search to specific servers, which host very

specific types of information – If you know which engines do what and if you are often looking for a specific type of data then you’ll want to bookmark a few of these.

Some use “spiders” to seek out html document headers, which usually contain key-words that describe content. – Helps the engine serve up many pages quickly, but leaves out tons of good information from reputable sources who publish on their own and are not all that concerned about the masses finding their sites or they simply don’t take the time to add the key-words to the headers of their pages.

Others search deep into the web, looking not only at the headers but the hundred’s of millions of pages as well. Google is an engine of this type. The problems associated with this type of search is that it often pulls up so much information it takes a real expert to limit the search to those valuable sites you are looking for.

The Problem with Search Engines and the Web

The web is not indexed Therefore there is no one central place

(like a library card catalog) where information can be organized about location.

Search Engines return thousands of “hits” per search Talk about finding a needle in the haystack!

Two Things You Must Do

Have a clear understanding of how to prepare your search. You must identify the main concepts in

your topic. Determine any synonyms, alternate spellings,

variant word forms for the topic.

Know how to use the various search tools available on the Internet. Search Engines: Alta-Vista, Google Directories: Yahoo, WWW Virtual Library

Subject Directories – Good for finding General Information on popular or scholarly subjects.

A subject directory is a catalog of sites collected and organized by humans.

Subject directories are often called subject "trees" because they start with a few main categories and then branch out into subcategories, topics, and subtopics. To find the homepage for the Los Angeles Dodgers

at Yahoo!, for example, select "Recreation & Sports" at the top level, "Sports" at the next level, "Baseball" at the third level, "Major League Baseball" at the fourth level, "Teams" at the fifth level, then finally “Los Angeles Dodgers."

Some Popular DirectoriesYahoo Yahoo is the big boy on the block, when it

comes to Internet Directories. It is an outstanding site for finding popular things of public interest on the www.

Looksmart A good alternative to Yahoo.

Open Directory

Lists scholarly and popular websites.

About.com Here you can find an on-line Librarian, each topic area has an assigned "Guide" responsible for keeping links in the topic area and writing additional information on the subject.

Three other useful directories for scholarly research are the Internet Public Library, the Librarians' Index to the Internet, and the The WWW Virtual Library.

Spiders and Bots

Spiders and Robots – Crawling around those telephone, cable lines and microwave transmissions from satellites…. Uhk!!

Search Engine Techniques

You have broken down your topic into key words and synonyms. Topic = UFOs

ufo Flying saucer Area 51 Missing time Aliens Close encounters Unidentified aircraft

Before you begin the search

If you are new to search engine use Read the main page for instructions Most engines have help links or links to

advanced searching procedures. Read, re-read, and read again.

There is no substitute for reading, although the web has grown to be quite the audio-visual show place, the vast majority of information still requires that you read with comprehension.

Use of Boolean Terms

Uses Boolean operators (and, or , not) to specify desired results.  AND narrows, OR broadens, NOT excludes. Some search tools use plus (+) and minus (-) marks instead of AND & NOT. AND

Tells search engines to look for both or all of the search terms. “UFO and alien and area 51” will return only pages where all three are mentioned.

OR Tells search engines to look for either search

term. “UFO OR Alien” will return pages in which UFO and Alien appear, as well as pages in which UFO or Alien appear alone on the page.

Phrase Searching

Surrounding text with quotes will order the search engine to find pages that contain exactly what is typed between them. “can use guys find the wetering bukit” will find only

pages that contain the phrase as spelled; so….. Check your spelling!

Combine Phrase Searching with Boolean Terms or implied Boolean (+/-). “World Series” AND Dodgers +“World Series” + Dodgers

Note – implied Boolean requires that a + or – appear before the phrase also.

Letter and Case Interpretation

Most search engines will interpret lower case letters as either lower case or capitals. If you desire both upper and lower case returned,

then type your request in lower case. If you want to limit your search then you can use

capital letters “Albert Einstein” or “EMS”. Like capital letters, most search engines will

interpret singular case as singular or plural. “dog” will return dog, dogs, Dogs, Dog, DOGS, and

DOG. You can use the plural form to limit your search;

DOGS will return DOGS.

Truncation – Excellent for those who were too lazy to look up proper spelling.

Several Search engines support truncation; which is the use of wild cards in your search term. Common wildcards are *, ?, and #

To search for all pages containing the letters “ear”, if you entered “*ear* you would get pages that contained, pear, ear, ears, pears, hear, hears, dear, dears, etc.

The * allows anything to precede or follow from your inquiry.

The ? Is a single letter holder; thus querying “l?st” returns list, lost, last, etc.

# is used as a numerical version of ?.

Search For UseAudio/Music

AllTheWeb | AltaVista | Dogpile | Fazzle | FindSounds.com | FtpFind | Genie Knows | HotBot Advanced Search | Ithaki | Ixquick | Lycos Music Downloads | Mamma | Lycos Multimedia Search | Researchville: Audio | Singingfish

Date last modifiedAllTheWeb Advanced Search | Exalead | Google Advanced Search | HotBot

Advanced Search | Teoma Advanced Search

Domain/Site/URL

AltaVista | AllTheWeb Advanced Search | AOL Advanced Search | Google Advanced Search | HotBot Advanced Search | Lycos Advanced Search | Mama Power Search | MSN Search Search Builder | SearchEdu.com | Teoma Advanced Search

File Format AllTheWeb Advanced Search | AOL Advanced Search

Geographic locationAllTheWeb Advanced | Exalead | HotBot Advanced Search | MSN Search Search

Builder

ImagesAllTheWeb | AltaVista | The Amazing Picture Machine | Ditto | Dogpile | Fazzle |

Google Image Search | HotBot Advanced Search | IceRocket | Ithaki | Ixquick | Mamma | Picsearch | Researchville: Images | Yahoo! News Image Gallery

Language

AllTheWeb | AltaVista More Precision | AOL Advanced Search | Google Language Tools | HotBot Advanced Search | iBoogie | Lycos Advanced Search | MSN Search Search Builder | Teoma Advanced Search

Multimedia & videoAll TheWeb | AltaVista | Dogpile | Fazzle | HotBot Advanced Search |

Lycos Multimedia Search | Mamma | Researchville: Video | Singingfish

Page Title/URLAOL Advanced Search | Exalead | Google | HotBot Advanced Search | Teoma

Advanced Search

Programming Language/File Extension

Exalead Advanced Search | HotBot Advanced Search |

Multiply Your Searching PleasureUse Meta-Search Engines

Meta-search engines search several major engines at once.

Meta-Search engines act as brokers or middlemen for other online search engines. Different search engines return different results

based on the information their spiders and bots have collected.

Utilizing a Meta-Search engine can be a quick way of determining which search engine is retrieving the most relevant hits for your particular search effort.

Popular Meta-Search Engines

DOGPILE searches 8 search engines and subject directories

as well as newsgroups, business news, and newswires. Dogpile supports full Boolean logic and phrase searching.

VIVISIMO clusters results from 8 search engines and subject

directories into convenient topic categories. Use implied Boolean logic (+/-) and phrase searching.

METACRAWLER submit queries to 7 search engines and subject

directories. Use implied Boolean logic (+/-) and phrase searching.

SPECIALTY DATABASES Specialty databases are dedicated to collecting relevant

sites for a particular subject

Findlaw – Targets Legal Resources Achoo! collects health and medical sites. Beaucoup lists more than 1,200 engines,

directories, and indices from around the world. Price's Direct Search links to a wide variety of

business, government, humanities, legal, news, and science databases.

Search.com, search more than 100 specialized databases.