(Adapted
from Dr. Susan Gallagher)
The
size of the Web has increased dramatically in just the last
few years. It is helpful to have a few search strategies
when you start wandering through the Web.
-
Follow links
on a search engine site such as Yahoo: http://www.yahoo.com
-
Yahoo
reviews new sites and posts the links by categories.
Sometimes this is a good place to start searching
because you can get a sense of how the categories
or topics are sorted. This might be helpful in determining
which search terms will yield you the best information.
-
Yahoo
is also a general search engine and keywords can
be typed in and searched from this site. After searching
Yahoo's links, you can link on the link at the bottom
of the list and usually go to another search engine.
-
Using the
search features on a search engine such as HotBot: http://www.hotbot.com
-
Hotbot
has several "pop up" menus on the left
hand side of the screen where the keywords for your
search are entered. Click on each of these menus
and read the choices.
-
One
example might be the "exact phrase" choice.
This would be helpful for searching on people, locations,
or common terms that are combined to have a specific
content meaning for your curriculum. The more terms
you combine in an exact phrase search will reduce
your "hits" (the links which are returned
as results). Depending on the results you are getting,
you may have to add more words if you get too many
results or decrease words if you are not getting
enough results to look at. If you are not getting
any results, be wary. For every topic there should
be some results. They might be commercial or not
beneficial for your project, but there should be
some information out there. It might also be the
time to start experimenting with different phrases
or combinations of words to search on. Try some
different terms and combinations of those terms
as phrases to see what hits are returned.
-
There
are also advanced search features, which allow you
to specify the date the site was posted or a certain
kind of file such as audio or video. These are also
helpful features when searching.
-
Using a "meta-search
engine" such as Dogpile: http://www.dogpile.com/
-
Dogpile
is a search engine, which searches 12-16 other search
engines and lists the results. Sometimes a search
will "time-out" on some of the search
engines, but you should be able to select the time
Dogpile waits on a search engine before timing out.
Dogpile is helpful in letting you compare the different
hits or results you would see form different search
engines.
-
Different
search engines use different search algorithms and
by using a meta-search engine, you may find one
set of results from a certain type of search engine
that works best for you or your topic. It is also
helpful to see if the same result is returned by
more than one search engine.
These
are just a few of the search engines and strategies that
you might use when searching the web. Boolean operators
such as AND, NOT, OR are best typed in all caps so the search
engine recognizes the word as an operator and not a search
term. + and - signs can also be used in combination with
terms to eliminate or insure certain words are in the results.
These work better with some search engines than others and
you should test the search engine you are using to see the
effect using these has on your return list. If the search
engine you are using does not have an Exact Phrase feature,
using quotation marks around the phrase will usually give
the search engine the instruction to search for the terms
only as a phrase. This will not work in all search engines,
however.
There
is not one "best" search engine to use. There
are many of them out there and there are several meta-search
engines as well. The important thing is to use at least
several different engines to be sure you have the best chance
of finding what you are looking for. Depending on how and
what the search engine searches will determine which and
how many results you get back.
For
more help and advice in searching the Web, read the Seven
Habits of Effective Web Searchers: http://websearch.tqn.com/library/weekly/aa010199.htm
